All Ahead of the Curve articles – Page 3
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Alternatives investing in a low-yielding world
Investors hoping to replicate bond-like returns (low to mid-single digit, low volatility and drawdown) are facing an unenviable predicament. How can they generate acceptable, positive returns without simultaneously suffering illiquidity, valuation uncertainty, gap risk, and other hard to quantify risks?
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Has the period of painless diversification ended?
With interest rates falling to historical lows the reality of a new financial landscape is confronting investors. It is one where the typical relationships between assets has come into question. In addition, basic ideas around diversification and portfolio construction no longer seem to match with the available investment opportunities.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Options trading as a portfolio diversifier: pilot or passenger?
Options can provide insurance against market volatility, but require detailed knowledge to ensure success
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Grasping intangible assets
Even the name hints at the challenge: intangible assets are hard to value. Recently, investors have looked to these assets to explain a decade of underperformance by value stocks. But new research suggests no tangible performance benefit from adjusting for intangibles.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Gold all set to shine during uncertain times
Which asset has no cash flow or yield, has a volatility similar to equities even though its long-term performance lags behind equities, and which has also had long periods of negative returns? Gold.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: COVID-19 and short-termism: finding the right balance
Finding a way to meet short-term needs without compromising long-term strategy has never been easy for businesses. The radical uncertainty introduced by COVID-19 has made the task much harder.
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Features
Ahead of the curve: Alternative data offers insight
The measures required to stop the spread of COVID-19 – social distancing and government-mandated lockdowns – mean that, unlike in previous recessions, services have led the economic decline.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Liquidity has been the litmus test for China’s bond market
It is no safe haven, but China has provided bond investors with important shelter through the storm
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Media, markets and investing in a better world
Hans-Jörg Naumer, director global capital markets and thematic research at AllianzGI, and B. Burcin Yurtoglu, chair of corporate finance at WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management Through our analysis of the impact of media coverage, we not only demonstrate that news can lower or raise financing costs; the results also ...
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Value investing – bruised, but not broken
The COVID-19-induced market crash of 2020 has battered investors, and in particular the fans of value investing. In the first quarter, value lagged growth by nearly 14% in the US and 13% globally, exceeding quarterly shortfalls at the trough of the global financial crisis. These losses are second-worst among all quarterly outcomes in over four decades, eclipsed only by the runaway tech bubble in the fourth quarter of 1999, as growth soared and value stalled.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Can the system win in EMs?
Systematic investment models have been commonplace in equity markets. Can they generate returns in emerging market debt?
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FeaturesAhead of the Curve: The mega-cap conundrum
Last year was challenging for quantitative equity strategies with a large proportion of them underperforming their benchmark on a rolling one-year basis. There has, therefore, been a great deal of interest in understanding the shortcomings of quantitative portfolios over the same calendar year.
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FeaturesAhead of the Curve: The trade war and Asia
The rivalry between the US and China looks set to dominate Asian affairs in the future and cannot be ignored by responsible investors. The escalation of tensions at the start of Donald Trump’s presidency led to an increase in trade barriers and impacted growth; now a temporary truce has been agreed but uncertainty remains, as do tariffs on Chinese exports to the US. The new bilateral agreement is a positive step, but investors should take a long-term view; the economic and strategic rivalry looks set to continue and some sectors are better placed than others to adapt to this landscape.
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FeaturesAhead of the Curve: Avoid the crowds in EMs
Emerging markets (EMs) look set to be the most important growth engine of the 2020s as their consumption levels rise and China follows a saw-toothed growth path towards the economic top spot. However, asset-allocators need to remove themselves from the malign legacy of the 2010s if they are to tap this growth.
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FeaturesAhead of the Curve: Measuring the right thing
The old adage, ‘measure twice, cut once,’ only works if you measure the right thing. The prominence of GDP growth as the ultimate gauge of economic performance, for example, is increasingly a case of measuring the wrong thing. A single metric cannot hope to capture all the complex trends that develop below the surface of a modern knowledge and services-based economy.
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FeaturesAhead of the Curve: Value investing in the next decade
Winds of change are blowing relentlessly across the globe and the investment world is no exception. Central to this evolution is the growth of intangible assets, ranging from brands and patents to franchise agreements and digital platforms.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: The duration bubble
Has the world entered a new paradigm in which growth, inflation and value investing are dead? Various indicators might have us believe this is the case.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: New economy, same old returns?
“You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: The psychology of contrarianism
Sociologists are likely to see contrarian investors as deviants, while psychologists may see them as healthy, ‘independent’ thinkers
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: The bubbles to come
Market bubbles would not happen in a perfect world. But humans are not perfect and our economies are inherently unstable.
