Just as the use of nuclear weapons promises "mutual assured destruction", lack of economic cooperation will lead to "mutual assured deflation" because no single country can revive global demand.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Highlight our upcoming live CE programs, and all of the complimentary on-demand CE-accredited resources published over recent months.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Nine months ago, we were told that the world would be in recession today. This did not quite happen. Now we are assured that 2023 will see a global recession, even in the US.
FTX may be the biggest scandal in crypto so far. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the death of crypto itself have been much exaggerated.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Western investors in China face a completely different economic terrain than the one in which they operated for more than a decade. In a rapidly deglobalising world, investors must consider their next moves carefully.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The world has entered a geopolitical depression with dangerous revisionist powers challenging the economic, financial, security, and geopolitical order that the US and its allies created after WWII.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
While equities do outperform in the long-term, the price we pay are the bear markets which periodically come along to test our staying power. This Spotlight is a guide to help investors survive bear markets.
The outcome of the 20th Party Congress underscores an important distinction between economic growth "with Chinese characteristics" as it has long been described, and a very different strain of development with Xi Jinping characteristics.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The first of these two papers provides a comprehensive review of the several thousand papers written on ESG investing and investment performance, while the second looks at downside risk reduction.
Team Transitory clearly lost to Team Persistent in the inflation debate. And now there are early signs that the Great Moderation has given way to the Great Stagflation.
After four decades of supercharged growth in residential property prices, we are finally seeing some of the froth come out of this market. This Spotlight argues that we are entering a very different environment for residential property prices.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
This Research Roundtable focused on the Warakirri Diversified Agriculture strategy, with senior practitioners deciding, after briefings, Q&A and debate, their individual rating for the strategy and whether to include it on a hypothetical APL and/or multi-manager portfolios. Afterwards, the meeting is truncated and published for on-demand viewing by all Forum members.
The British pound's current gyrations point to some essential traits of currency markets. I am not sure what to make of Trussonomics.
With ever greater participation in superannuation, the accumulated sum held those entering retirement is often significant. But do older people have the cognitive ability and financial acumen to invest effectively?
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Rich Pickings explores the investment beliefs and philosophies of prominent professional investors. In this episode, I'm in conversation with Alex Lennard, Investment Director, Ruffer in London...
Highlight our upcoming live CE programs, and all of the complimentary on-demand CE-accredited resources published over recent months.
Such is the current narrative from active managers, and it may well be true. But, we should consider what is meant by "a stock-pickers market". As for the concept that alpha grows on trees? It's nuts and you can clearly see it's nuts!
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
It is past time that we shift our understanding of where the hinge of global economic history lies. I chose 1870 which is when the industrial research lab, the modern corporation, and full globalisation fell into place.
Despite widespread criticism of the efficient markets hypothesis, development of comparably broad alternatives has been lacking. One promising direction is the adaptive markets hypothesis which seeks apply the concepts and methods of ecology and evolutionary biology to financial market dynamics.
The seismic shift in economic, social and political themes means the future ain't what it used to be – rendering the 60/40 portfolio inadequate.
This Research Roundtable focused on the Warakirri Global Emerging Markets strategy, with senior practitioners deciding, after briefings, Q&A and debate, their individual rating for the strategy and whether to include it on a hypothetical APL and/or multi-manager portfolios. Afterwards, the meeting is truncated and published for on-demand viewing by all Forum members.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Next week, the US BEA releases its advance estimate of second-quarter GDP growth. Brace yourself for headlines claiming that the US economy is in recession, and all market reactions that will trigger. But do not be surprised if you're told the opposite two months later.
The past 18 months has seen the biggest bond bear market in almost 50 years. In this Spotlight, we look at why bond prices have fallen so much, how this bear market compares with others, and what returns and volatility we are likely to see going ahead.
Harvard's Lawrence Summers was interviewed about inflation last month. His comments focused on a single entity - the Fed. But fighting the causes of today's higher inflation is simply not within the Fed's power.
These two papers relate to some interesting quirks of the finance industry. The first finds that the accuracy of currency forecasts is worse than could be achieved from random predictions. The second gives a different slant of the large increase in the size of the financial sector.
Highlight our upcoming live CE programs, and all of the complimentary on-demand CE-accredited resources published over recent months.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
We may indeed be in for a shortish period of high inflation and low growth - but as to this leading to 1980s-style stagflation? It's nuts and you can clearly see it's nuts!
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Simply put, the effort to fight inflation could easily crash the economy, the markets, or both. The historical evidence shows that a soft landing is highly improbable. A recession in the next two years is likely.
With stock market valuations close to record highs, and interest rates beginning to rise from all-time lows, traditional portfolios are likely to disappoint in the years ahead.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
As of 6 May, the bond market expected US consumer price inflation to average 2.5% between five and 10 years from now. So why does Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University argue "things are way out of control"?
Hindsight can be a valuable source of learning. However, hindsight is undermined by a range of factors and hindsight bias clouds judgments in all areas of life - including investing.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
For many decades, the default investment portfolio was a 60/40 split – this was seen as the ideal blend of growth and defensive investments for most investors most of the time. Will it continue to deliver in a high inflation, high interest rate environment?
The risks of a global recession trifecta are rising by the day. I am not sure politicians and policymakers are up to the task they may soon confront.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs
The predictable downward revision cycle for the global economic outlook has officially begun. The revision by the IMF, largely in response to the war in Ukraine, is a big one...
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Despite astonishingly good returns during their limited history, there are too many uncertainties around crypto-currencies to consider them an investable asset.
Inflation's return marks a tipping point. A lot of wishful thinking will have to be abandoned, starting with the idea that governments can borrow or print as much money as they need to spray at every problem.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
As inflation fears increase, we are seeing property and infrastructure fund managers saying their favourite asset class is a wonderful inflation hedge. There is more than a grain of truth here, but it is only half of the story.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The global economy has suffered two large negative supply-side shocks - first from the Covid-19 pandemic and now from Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine - exacerbating stagflationary conditions.
President Zelensky of Ukraine finally called a spade a spade by designating the NATO allies as cowards. The winner in all this is President Zi of China, reinforcing his view that the West is spineless and in decline.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The unprecedented economic weapons that have been deployed against Russia will be unquestionably painful. But the risks must not be underplayed. When fully unleashed, sanctions, too, are weapons of mass destruction.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The tendency to fight the last war stems from human nature. Recent events are most salient in shaping people's perceptions of how the world works. As central banks are now realising, a longer-term historical perspective offers wisdom derived from a wider variety of circumstances.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
We have distilled the Markets Summit 2022 Faculty's high-conviction propositions into three key discussion threads, and analysed how these threads relate to the key take-outs from Markets Summit 2021. By considering the discussion threads within the context of the program theme, you will be better able to decide whether you agree or disagree with each proposition, and to decide your key take-outs, and which of the propositions will investigate further after the live program.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
If everyone wants a free lunch, the bill eventually will be paid by those least able to afford it. Emerging-market economies have had to learn this the hard way. Developed countries may have to learn it again.
Led by behavioural finance expert, Herman Brodie, the Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making course will help you identify, analyse and evaluate the principal human preferences that influence decision-making in situations of uncertainty, so you can recognise and identify these preferences in others, to improve investment decision-making.
Classical economists often incorporated human behaviour into their thinking. But in the 1960s and 1970s, homo economicus - the great rational agent of economic theory - was born. It was not until the 1990s that the link between human behaviour and economics began to be re-established. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture reviews the evolution of economic thinking, concluding that, with the link between human behaviour and economics being re-established, economics has come full circle.
How we organise information in our heads, evaluate it, give it weight and then store it in our memories impacts our decisions. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture looks at the concept of the schema, a mental model of the world we use to swiftly understand incoming information.
The ability of prospect theory to explain many observations in both investing and everyday decision-making made it an incredibly powerful approach in economics. But that wasn't enough to allow it to challenge 'expected utility theory'. To do that it needed to consider the way in which people evaluate probabilities. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture reviews prospect theory, the disposition effect, and expected utility theory.
Cognitive dissonance theory can explain our motivation to seek the information that drives our choices. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture reviews the theory of cognitive dissonance and the mental discomfort that results from holding conflicting beliefs, values or attitudes, that can explain our motivation to seek the information that drives our choices.
Standard finance assumes that economic agents discount the future exponentially - yet the original proponents of Discounted Utility Theory conceded that human beings do not act that way. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture reviews what researchers have discovered about intertemporal choice, the process by which people make decisions about what and how much to do at various points in time, when choices at one time influence the possibilities available at other points in time.
Stopping losses, exposing ourselves to information that goes against our beliefs, not indulging story-tellers, facing hard truths about our past decisions - all these things detract from our comfort. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture provides 10 recommendations for improving investment decision-making, drawing on the learnings from Lectures 1 to 5.
Two of the most important practical implications of prospect theory in asset pricing are the existence of price momentum, and investors' preferences for skewness in the distribution of returns. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture reviews explains why these phenomena persist and practical ways they can be exploited.
We like to think our beliefs are the result of a long, thoughtful evaluation, the product of carefully curated information and our personal experiences. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture reveals the origins of many of our beliefs, and shows what we can do to make our belief-building more robust.
When should I retire? Will I be happy? How long will I live? Our responses to questions like these are prone to systematic biases that influence our choices and, ultimately, life satisfaction in retirement. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture focuses on the behavioural influences on decision making about the transition from the workforce into retirement.
Why is it that a client selects one asset manager over another? And why are some asset managers retained during the challenging periods in the cycle and others are not? Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture concerns the science of trust, revealing what really causes trust to be built over time.
Advisers, not clients, are responsible for the creation of a high-trust relationships. But when does interpersonal trust building become selfish manipulation? Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture reviews the ethical limits to advisers' actions to build and maintain trust with clients.
As for other life outcomes, personality types are useful in explaining personal finance outcomes such as wealth accumulation, retirement planning, spending, compulsive consumption, indebtedness, and risk-taking. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture explores the link between personality and individual preferences for communication, information-seeking, and susceptibility to persuasion.
Greater career success is the reward for individuals who see Diversity and Inclusion as a skill to be learned. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture examines the hurdles to progress towards a genuinely inclusive workplace from a behavioural perspective.
The typical carrot-and-stick approach to ethics assumes that people faced with ethical dilemmas conduct a conscious, deliberate, cost-benefit analysis before making decisions. Yet, the behavioural sciences have shown us that our decision-making is often non-conscious and automatic. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture examines insights from the behavioural sciences that can help us adhere to our stated ethical principles.
People attach great importance to their social connections. Yet, this social goal will not always dovetail with groups securing the best possible decision. Part of the Finology short course, Behavioural Finance - Investment Decision-Making, this lecture examines how we can improve group activity to help ensure dedication to the organisational objective becomes precisely the route by which we achieve social rewards.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
2021 is a year that reminded me of the song "If You're Going Through Hell". In the spirit of productive thinking and consideration of potential futures, I offer you my 2022 predictions for the next five years.
2021 turned out to be a relatively positive year for economies and markets in most parts of the world. But investors are likely to remain on the edge of their seats for most of 2022.
The hottest investment topic of the day is inflation and its possible impact on investment markets. In farrelly's view, it is a storm in a teacup. This sanguine view is very much an outworking of our core philosophy that the long-term is much easier to forecast than the short-term.