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Institutional investors weather the great rethink

A “dramatic and sobering” first quarter has seen institutions re-think everything from ESG to hedge funds as the job of investing becomes harder in a more dangerous world. Recent surveys of global institutions have unearthed an increasingly gloomy outlook from our biggest investors as they scrutinise the new inflation paradigm and a more multi-polar geopolitical…

Lachlan Maddock | 13th Apr 2022 | More
Guard against ‘unintended consequences’ of Ukraine: BCA

The fight in Ukraine is unlikely to spill over into a shooting war between Russia and the NATO countries. That doesn’t mean impossible, and investors “should absolutely worry about unintended consequences.” For the last month or so, investors have been reading the entrails of a beast they’re broadly unfamiliar with – geopolitics – to determine…

Lachlan Maddock | 31st Mar 2022 | More
How new quants combine best of both worlds

Quantitative investment management has undergone a massive lift in profile in recent years, largely due to the rise of ETFs and smart-beta strategies. But the ‘new quants’, as they are being called, are going much further than that. While hardly new to the space, Harindra (Harin) de Silva, a lead portfolio manager at Allspring Global…

Greg Bright | 31st Mar 2022 | More
  • ESG and the ‘clash of cultures’

    The cult of the benchmark is alive and well in global financial markets – and it’s probably doing more harm than good when it comes to ESG investing. ESG has leapt from the fringes of the financial services to widespread acceptance in just a handful of years. But markets tend to act as myopic, short-term…

    Lachlan Maddock | 17th Mar 2022 | More
    The ‘S’ stands for stability

    When it comes to geopolitics, investing isn’t as easy as “ESG”. With the prospect of sanctions leaving investors with stranded Russian assets on the balance sheet, several commentators have suggested this could all of have been avoided if those investors just took the “S” (social) and “G” (governance) in “ESG” more seriously. They believe that…

    Lachlan Maddock | 9th Mar 2022 | More
    Why investors should stop worrying (and learn to love the bomb)

    The chances of a nuclear apocalypse are allegedly higher now than during the Cold War – but from a financial perspective, investors should “largely ignore existential risk.” A note from Canada-based BCA Research warns that the world now faces a ten per cent chance of a nuclear war – but that the prospect of nuclear…

    Lachlan Maddock | 9th Mar 2022 | More
  • Good and bad news in wake of Ukraine

    While neither Ukraine or Russia are particularly large trading partners for the West, the risks created by the conflict aren’t negligible – and could easily spill over to the global economy. “The potential economic risk (of the Ukraine conflict) has three primary transmission mechanisms: higher global energy prices, further supply chain disruptions and a European…

    Lachlan Maddock | 4th Mar 2022 | More
    Markets enter a new era of confusion

    BlackRock has a message for investors trying to navigate the confusion that has sundered markets in recent weeks: get used to it. Rising inflation was enough to give markets the jitters; tack on a war – and the prospect of an even bigger one, should the situation in Ukraine devolve further – and all the…

    Lachlan Maddock | 2nd Mar 2022 | More