Passive funds have built momentum on the win-win premise of low-cost market benchmarked products but a new study confirms the undoubted winners of the seemingly unstoppable trend: indexers. Global index providers saw an aggregate year-on-year revenue increase of almost a quarter in 2021 as demand for passive products, notably exchange-traded funds (ETFs), soared over the…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fund manager in possession of a concentrated portfolio with high active share must necessarily deliver alpha. Or maybe the truth is not so universal, according a new JANA research paper. The JANA study, conducted in partnership with Cabot Investment Technology, refutes common investor prejudices that high active…
The NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) has confirmed a trio of senior appointments, luring two overseas candidates to assume the plum positions. In an update last week, the NZS named Kathryn Kerner, Kevin Wong and Rachael Le Mesurier as respective head of data analytics, senior investment strategist and head of diversity, equity and inclusion. Both Kerner…
BlackRock has flagged an ESG-lite agenda ahead of the 2022 corporate proxy-voting season. In a note published last week, the BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) group says the US$10 trillion manager – the world’s largest – will direct its considerable proxy power in favour of fewer shareholder proposals this year as companies face votes on more…
Active management will be increasingly important for defined contribution (DC) retirement savings schemes as value-for-fees, expected lower future returns and sustainable investment preferences come to the fore, according to a new MFS white paper. The analysis says the rising exposure to index investments in DC schemes has been built on at least three “misconceptions about…
Global research house, Morningstar, has prepped investors for disappointment amid a boom in thematic funds. In a new report on the sector, the researcher notes that while thematic funds have experienced record growth in recent years as well as outperformance, history suggests the good times won’t last for long. “Over the past 15 years, more…
Regulators won’t be able to scrub out environmental, social and governance (ESG) ‘greenwashing’ in the investment industry, according to influential US finance academic, Aswath Damodaran. In a blistering attack on the ESG investing sector last month, Damodaran says greenwashing – or falsely marketing funds as sustainable (or the like) – is an indelible feature of…
Investors will have to retune expectations in line with changing market harmonics, global consultancy firm Oliver Wyman notes in part three of a five-paper opus delivered earlier this year. Based on data covering a 150-year period, the Oliver Wyman series concludes that investors must turn to more sophisticated tools to appreciate the complex tones of…
Investment strategies yoked to indices face the most risk as the 30-year global economic détente unravels, according to UK-based economist, Andrew Hunt. Hunt told a Nikko Asset Management webinar audience last week that index investors benefited over the previous three decades from “chasing liquidity” and themes predicated on growing economic collaboration across the world. But…
Factor-specialist Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) has established a quantitative investment team targeting the Asia-Pacific region. Australia-based, Scott Bennett, will head the new NTAM APAC quant unit across the dual locations of Melbourne and Hong Kong. Bennett joined NTAM in 2018 as head of quant research for Australia and NZ. Before moving to NTAM, Bennett…
