The market for labeled green bonds—bonds whose proceeds are specifically “ring-fenced” for environmental or climate mitigation or adaptation projects—has grown rapidly since the first green bond issue in 2008. Growing diversity of issuers, larger average issuance size, and estimated full-year 2014 issuance of $40 billion (half in corporates) all suggest that the green bond universe…
On May 6, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba filed a registration statement in the United States, its first official step toward becoming a public company. In addition to its size and nationality, Alibaba’s plan to list under a dual-class voting structure is noteworthy. Multi-class share voting structures are frequently criticized for exacerbating the agency problem created…
While cap-weighted benchmarks for bond portfolios remain the norm, indexes based on other criteria are increasingly available. Benchmarks are an essential tool for investors to monitor and analyze overall portfolio performance, as well as the success of investment strategies and managers. Comparing manager performance against benchmarks also can help inform decisions about whether to use…
The new Treasury FRNs are attractive not only for money market funds and institutions that roll T-bills within large liquidity or collateral pools, but also for other institutional investors intent on reducing interest rate risk within their fixed income allocation.
While the dim sum bond market has grown rapidly and there are good reasons to expect it to provide investment opportunities in the future, we do not presently advocate a direct allocation to dim sum bonds given issues such as size, illiquidity, lack of transparency, and governance.
This commentary briefly discusses market activity in 2011, assesses both long-term structural headwinds for markets and particular risks for 2012, and provides our outlook for the year. It also examines where we could be wrong, and reviews our asset class outlooks based on current valuations. Overall, our investment advice is to stay defensive, seek greater…
This paper discusses what global macro is and how its practitioners operate, reviews its history and performance, and discusses its major attractions and key risks. We believe a thoughtfully constructed allocation to select global macro managers offers various potential benefits to investors, particularly in an increasingly macro-driven environment.
While the long-term case for Asia ex Japan remains compelling and equity valuations are still reasonable, in the near term we continue to see greater risks on the downside. We view Japanese equities as inexpensive and Australian equities as reasonably priced, albeit more expensive than developed markets equities as a whole.
Even as we focus on the investment challenges of the new decade, it is useful to consider the past ten years. This report briefly covers the performance of various asset classes in the 2000s before delving into lessons learned and observations relevant in the years ahead.
The year 2010 will likely be a challenging one given the high expectations reflected in current market prices, uncertainties surrounding the economy and government policy, and the absence of clear signs of sustainable economic strength.