Browsing: Finance & Economics

The illiquidity premium is one of the most frequently discussed and hotly disputed subjects in financial economics. Speaking broadly, an investment is not a checking account. One generally cannot just “get the cash back” at a moment’s notice, by visiting some equivalent of an ATM. How long will it takeRead More

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently imposed a stay on part of its transaction fee pilot (TFP). There is understandably a good deal of debate about the significance of this stay. The TFP, initiated in December 2018 with the expectation that it would run for at least one year, andRead More

Many high-frequency trading (HFT) firms have disappeared into larger firms as merger activity has increased recently. Those acquired include Chopper, Infinium, Teza, RGM Advisors, and Sun Trading. It also includes Getco, the Chicago-based firm founded in 1999 by two former floor traders that almost defined the field for some time.Read More

By Diane Harrison Hedge fund investors and marketers seem glad to let go of 2018 and its disappointing finish, down 3.41%, a marked decline from 2017’s 11.99% gain. And yet, 2019 markets started the year with an upswing, reflecting the hope that springs eternal in capital raising. Alternatives managers willRead More

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch INTRODUCTION Investors fear black swan events, although it can be argued that this fear is irrational. The black swan theory is a metaphor that describes a surprise event that has a major impact and is often rationalized with hindsight. A recent example would be theRead More

Two scholars working with Bayesian probability theory recently published a fascinating discussion of market timing and portfolio efficiency. They have proposed what they call a “hierarchical ensemble learning portfolio.” Yes, that sounds rather heavy on the jargon. We’ll break it down a bit in what follows. The authors of theRead More

Algorithmic trading may fairly be said to have conquered the public equities world, although there are still pockets of resistance and related controversies. The robots have now turned their attention to the bond markets. Bond markets are different from stock markets in a lot of ways, and many of theseRead More

One startling fact about the new book, How Global Currencies Work: Past Present and Future, is to be found in the index. One would normally expect, from a title and subtitle like that, that there would be a lot of pages enumerated at the index heading “Bretton Woods.” After all,Read More

The NYSE, on Thursday, Feb. 14, Nasdaq, and Cboe Global Markets (the following day) have united to bring lawsuits against the Securities and Exchange Commission to stop its transaction fee pilot. These are the three largest US equity exchanges and their attitude toward their regulator is usually one of cooperation.Read More

A new paper from State Street Global Advisors takes a sociological approach to the search for alpha in emerging market nations. It contends that the “major theme for growth” in the emerging markets moving forward will be “based on the rise of the middle class and rising consumption in theseRead More

Given a long wave of scandals that lasted from 2008 until 2012, most of the derivatives industry, and most of its regulators, have agreed that the London Interbank Offered rate [Libor] ought to be replaced by a more tamper-resistant mechanism. Surely there must be an index that will measure theRead More

A sound “portfolio optimization strategy” is one that takes into consideration how its assets are behaving in the bad times, those that represent the left-side tail of the bell curve. This is not all that novel an idea, but Maria Kartsakli and Felix Schlumpf, Zurich Insurance Company executives, give itRead More

The bosses of a publicly listed company had better care what their employees think about their company, because “Mr. Market” cares. That is one natural inference from a new paper by Jinfei Sheng, of the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, who looks at how the opinionsRead More

Public pension funds in the United States invest in infrastructure. Unfortunately, they aren’t very good at it. A recent working paper of the NBER concludes, indeed, that public pensions are so bad at such investments that they—and thus either the public or its retirees or both—are unwittingly subsidizing infrastructure projects.Read More

A new book by Hassan Malik may serve as a caution for alternative investors operating in the emerging markets, in the form of a case study about the politics of default. Malik is an emerging markets strategist at Ned Davis Research in London. His new book, Bankers and Bolsheviks, beganRead More

On Jan. 11,  the CFA Society India hosted the 9th Annual India Investment Conference in Mumbai. CAIA was a platinum sponsor of this event.  The theme of this year’s IIC was “investing insights for uncertain times.” Nick Pollard, Managing Director, Asia Pacific at CFA Institute, kicked things off with aRead More

By Nicolas Rabener, CAIA, Factor Research Summary: China exhibits the world’s highest corporate debt as % of GDP However, Chinese stocks are not significantly more levered than U.S. stocks Asset and debt growth has stalled in 2018, likely indicating an economic slowdown INTRODUCTION The McKinsey Global Institute published an influentialRead More

Understanding of the “Markowitz problem” has changed in the 60+ years since Harry Markowitz’ publication of an article in the Journal of Finance that outlined the basics of modern portfolio theory. The problem is that portfolio theory requires an investor to estimate risk, return, and correlation from market data, meaningRead More

A new working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago looks at the real risk-free interest rate over the last 30 years, where it has been trending, and why that trend hasn’t had the consequences one might intuitively have predicted. The paper, Accounting for Macro-Finance Trends, is the workRead More

Five stories stand out as the dominant stories for and about pursuers of alpha in the year just passed. There is nothing arbitrary about the list below. We admit, though, that the order in which we present them is arbitrary: that is, it is not a ranking, and it isRead More

It was just about 10 years ago (Dec. 10, 2008) that Bernie Madoff acknowledged to his sons, Mark and Andrew, that he had “absolutely nothing left” of the funds that had been entrusted to him; that the investment fund that bore his name was “just one big lie.” There isRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association One hundred and fifteen years ago today two Wrights tried to make it right when it came time to ponder the prospect of flying the friendly skies. On that day in an open field in a place called Kill Devil Hills, the first recorded airplane flight took off and safelyRead More

Assets under management for Asia’s managers have ballooned in the last 10 years, with an increase on average of 9% annually. Performance has been such as to encourage inflow. A recent study by McKinsey suggests that the “good times” will “keep rolling.” But it also cautions that the opportunities inRead More

By Nicolas Rabener, CAIA, Factor Research Summary: Common equity factors generated attractive risk-adjusted returns in the Chinese stock market Factor performance in China often mirrors global factor performance Indicates common factor drivers that permeate even emerging and isolated markets INTRODUCTION Economic news like changes in GDP growth are frequently usedRead More

This has been a terrible year for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, the flagship for the asset class, peaked in the middle of December 2017 at a value of above $17,000. By the end of January this year, it was below $10,000. By September BTC had settled into a price range of $6,500.Read More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association The resolution season will soon be upon us. Many will aspire to eat less, exercise more, be better partners or parents, or maybe even sit for the March 2019 CAIA Exam. Resolve doesn’t always make it across the finish line though, even with the very best ofRead More

Distressed debt markets have four themes emerging, according to a new paper issued by the Wells Fargo Investment Institute They are: the consequences of central bank tightenings around the globe; the elevation of debt levels, also something happening globally; the regulatory pressure over non-conforming loans (especially in Europe); and theRead More

On Wednesday, December 5, in Tokyo, Japan, the SuperReturn Japan 2018 event convenes. CAIA is a sponsor of this event. Jeff Diehl, managing partner at Adams Street Partners, a multi-national investment manager with more than $35 billion in assets under management, is attending. He will participate in a panel WednesdayRead More

A new paper in the Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship, and the Law looks at the “Brokaw bill” of 2016 and at the facts said to have motivated it. This turns out to be an object lesson in how scary hedge funds, especially activist hedge funds, look to legislators, and theRead More

Three scholars affiliated with the University of Manchester have  published a paper that reaches a striking view of corporate leadership and the decision to issue convertible bonds. Cynics have long suspected that Wall Street smart-alecks have roped the executives of corporations into issuing instruments that are contrary to the bestRead More

McGraw Hill Education has brought out a new book by Bruce I. Jacobs, of Jacobs Levy Equity Management. The book, Too Smart for our Own Good, concerns “ingenious investment strategies, illusions of safety, and market crashes.” The thesis is that the financial crises of recent decades are the consequence ofRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Pity the poor maligned pig. From the early origins of the Mother Goose nursery rhyme dating back almost 300 years, to the modern and profane descriptor for any boorish lout, the pig is there. Commonly used synonyms, like swine, provide little solace and theRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association What is a complex transaction without a battery of lawyers to paper it up. These legal minds are an integral part of most transactions and their presence is mostly felt at the time of deal creation and, maybe even more so, when things go offRead More

In the late 1980s, the chairman of The Foothill Group approached Edward I. Altman, already then well known for the creation of the Z-score used for predicting bankruptcy. The chairman asked Altman to develop a descriptive and analytical white paper on distressed debt. He obliged, writing first a paper onRead More

It will be 50 years ago next year (1969) that Hans R. Stoll came out with “The Relationship between Put and Call Option Prices,” establishing the principle of put-call parity. Stoll’s article in The Journal of Finance was a landmark in the developing scholarship about derivatives. It preceded the workRead More

By Deepak Kanungo, Founder and CEO of Hedged Capital LLC In this introductory article, we explore three types of errors inherent in all financial models. We examine these errors using a simple probabilistic model that can be used for predicting the federal funds rate, an interest rate of seminal importanceRead More

Two recent scholarly papers take distinctive looks at the sukuk market in Malaysia. Accordingly, each contributes to the ongoing discussions and evaluations of the place of Islamic finance within the broader global (and alpha-seeking) picture. Sukuk are bond-like instruments structured to pay profit, not interest, that are sold chiefly toRead More

Glassbridge has put out an ambitious white paper about the “evolution of asset allocation across the investment management industry,” one that begins with the basics of the Capital Asset Pricing Model and ends with quantitative analysis and crowdsourcing. The premise is that new strategies, and new ranges of data, areRead More

The Principal Traders Group of the Futures Industry Association (FIA PTG) recently offered its thoughts on market structure, outlining one direction of reform for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Reg NMS. Reg NMS (National Market System) was promulgated in 2005, in order to ensure competition among markets, and in theRead More

The founder of CEO of MSR Indices, a Parsippany, N.J.-based index-investors consultancy, has authored a white paper on target volatility, also known as intertemporal risk parity. The gist of the paper is that: (1) equity hedge funds do secure alpha for their investors, obvious if one measures their performance againstRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association What’s your liquidity M.O.? If you are less than certain, it is time to look east toward the country of India and the land of Modi. After all, when 1.3 billion people cough there is a decent chance the rest of the world justRead More

Do investors arbitrage cryptocurrencies? Two recent studies offer a “yes” answer, though they in certain other respects differ significantly in their conclusions. Specifically, one study shows that in one respect arbitrage has done its duty and effectively eliminated the opportunities for arb profits, enforcing efficiency. In other situations, though, theRead More

On Sept. 24, the 9th Annual Inside Alternatives and Asset Allocation event convenes at Wynn Las Vegas, with CAIA sponsorship. The purpose of the event: to look beyond traditional alternative investments and strategies, to take the measure of a new breed of alternatives, including impact/SRIs, cryptocurrencies, and the application ofRead More

David Glasner, an economist with the Federal Trade Commission, in a new Mercatus Research Paper, offers what he calls a “deeper explanation of the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recovery.” Deeper than what? Deeper than attributing the bust to the bursting of the housing price bubble. Glasner’s newRead More

Two executives at the Neuberger Berman Group have prepared a paper on what they call the “overall case for a recovery in emerging market debts” in the months to come. Investors will want to “be around” for such a rebound, they say. There are obviously now, and there will continueRead More

Scholars affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania recently produced a paper about digital currencies and initial coin offerings, “Coin Operated Capitalism.” The gist of the paper is that the purchase of such tokens may be riskier than investors have thus far been led to expect and may entail more risk thanRead More

The “round number effect” is an endless source of fascination in the worlds of both trading and statistics. Human brains, after all, tend to think in round numbers. A market pundit on television may say, “If the price of stock XYZ gets below $8.00, it’ll be worth buying.” He won’tRead More

Christina Zhu, of the University of Pennsylvania, in a recent paper, looks at the consequences of Big Data for corporate management. What “Big Data” means depends on who is talking or writing about it. For economists working within the classic microeconomic framework, it means a drastic fall in the cost of acquiring information.Read More

Malta was the first jurisdiction within the EU to develop a regulatory system for collective investment schemes that invest in cryptocurrencies. A new paper offering what it calls a “top-down analysis” of hedge funds involved with cryptos details the regulatory framework now in force in Malta, highlighting the set-up andRead More

A new study prepared for the Federal Reserve Board looks at the use of algorithms to read and interpret financial news. While there have been a lot of studies that have looked at this topic, one unique feature of this new paper, “First to ‘Read’ the News,” is that itRead More