The world of investing and business has seen a great deal of change in the past 30 years. This report shares thoughts on the ten attributes of great fundamental investors. Accounting is the language of business and you need to understand it to appreciate economic value and to assess competitive positioning. Investors face a slew of psychological challenges. Perhaps the most difficult is updating beliefs when new information arrives. Position sizing and portfolio construction still do not get the attention they warrant. The substantial shift from active to passive management has profound implications for the investment industry.
Category Archives: CIWM
ESG Integration for the Masses
Historically, ESG indices have not attracted asset volumes comparable to smart beta index strategies. This could be attributed to the fact that market participants and academics alike have struggled to link ESG-based strategies with financial performance.
As researchers shift their focus from how to study ESG to how to integrate ESG data into products and indices, two key issues related with integrating ESG data have come to light that may be the reason some market participants investors have held back from taking the plunge.
MSCI – WHAT MATTERS FOR INVESTORS IN THE LONG RUN
Investors who aim to understand what drives returns over the long run might look to the Land of the Midnight Sun.
What are the main sources of return for equity investors who measure their horizon in decades? If you hold securities over the short term, say, for a year, valuation changes matter a lot. But over much longer periods, up to 20 years, the picture changes dramatically, notes Remy Briand, head of research, whose latest post discusses an analysis that MSCI performed on behalf of the Ministry of Finance of Norway.
How share repurchases boost earnings without improving returns
Of all the measures of a company’s performance, its earnings per share (EPS) may be the most visible. It’s quite literally the “bottom line” on a company’s income statement. It’s the number that business journalists focus on more often than any other, and it’s usually the first or second item in any company press release about quarterly or annual performance. It’s also often a key factor in executive compensation.
Investors ‘warming’ to alternative ways of viewing portfolios – survey
Institutional investors may be warming to approaches beyond traditional asset class-based allocation regimes, with many also turning to factor or objective-based alternative investment models, according to a survey commissioned by State Street Global Advisors.
Conducted in the second half of last year, the survey was of senior executives with asset allocation responsibilities at 400 large institutional investors from around the world. It focused on investors’ objectives, their approach to asset allocation and their framework for measuring success.
Mckinsey: The long and the short of stock-market volatility
Short-term measures of volatility can fluctuate wildly. But over the long term the market has been remarkably stable.
Markets are volatile. Or are they? After bouncing around 2,100 for six months, the S&P 500 began to swing more dramatically last August. With 100- to 200-point shifts between a high of about 2,100 and lows approaching 1,800, the index has been erratic for some time. That has many managers—as well as many analysts and investors—pondering whether the markets have entered an era of structurally higher volatility relative to the previous century. Read more
Top 100 global investors 2016
The top 100 global investors are ranked by size of real estate assets under management at the end of 2015. Numbers are calculated by S&P Global’s MMD and IPE
Asset Allocation: Saying no to infrastructure
Norway has bucked the trend and decided against moving its sovereign wealth fund into unlisted infrastructure. Rachel Fixsen investigates why
Norway’s decision to keep unlisted infrastructure out of its sovereign wealth fund (SWF) has raised questions about the investment case for the asset class.
At the beginning of April, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance declared that it would not permit unlisted infrastructure investments in the SWF because the potential benefits were unclear. The Government Pension Fund consists of the former oil fund, the NOK7.47trn (€802bn) Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), and the much smaller, domestically-orientated NOK198bn Government Pension Fund Norway (GPFN).
Webinar : A Practitioner’s Guide to Sophisticated Sector Strategies, 18 May, 2pm ET
Sector strategies often revolve around the market-cap-weighted S&P 500®, but they don’t have to stop there. Small-cap, global, and equal-weighted sector approaches can also prove to be effective risk-on/risk-off strategies.
Hear perspectives from top practitioners, as well as renowned investment strategist Sam Stovall, on topics including:
- Whether 2016 will be a year to “sell in May and go away”
- The ins and outs of rules-based sector strategies that have historically beaten the benchmarks
- Understanding the risk and return implications of equal-weighted sector strategies
- Using the GICS® sectors of the S&P Global 1200, the S&P SmallCap 600®, and the S&P MidCap 400® to respond to global trends and leverage less-seen opportunities
Register now
Speakers:
David Haviland, Managing Partner, Beaumont Capital Management
Malia Morales, CIMA, CRPC, Senior Vice President, Private Wealth Advisor, Senior Portfolio Manager, Tactical Associates/Merrill Lynch
Philip Murphy, Vice President, North American Equities, S&P Dow Jones Indices
Roger Scheffel, Chief Investment Officer, Wilbanks Smith & Thomas Asset Management
Sam Stovall, Equity Strategist, S&P Global Market Intelligence
Randy Swan, President, Swan Global Investments
AIWMI KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE 