The Public Debt Office is the cornerstone of debt strategies for the Ministry of Finance in Chile. It supports liquidity and ensures stability in the local financial market through issuance and placement of treasury bonds. In this context, the Public Debt Office establishes referential interest rates in order to facilitate access to capital markets for Read more […]
The number of stocks listed in the US is falling. Currently there are 3,758 listed stocks, ten years ago there were 4,500 and 20 years ago the number topped 7,400. The total value of the market, as measured by the total market capitalization of the S&P Total Market Index, continues to rise. As of yesterday Read more […]
VIX® closed last night at 11.33. What, if anything, does that mean? We recently published a research paper, together with a more digestible practitioner’s guide, that provides a method for converting a given VIX level into an expectation for S&P 500® volatility over the next 30 days. Exhibit 1 shows that these estimates have provided Read more […]
While 2017 is winding down with volatility levels at historical lows, a calmness has remained in the market for quite some time. According to Fei Mei Chan, Director of Index Investment Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, the S&P 500 is on track for its least volatile year in 22 years. With volatility (or lack Read more […]
In November, mid-caps led the U.S. equity market with the S&P 400 gaining 3.68%, followed by small-caps in the S&P 600 that gained 3.52% and large-caps in the S&P 500 that gained 3.07%. The S&P 500 logged its 13th consecutive positive month, the longest streak in its monthly history ever (data going back to Oct. Read more […]
Wow. It may not be experiencing quite the same year-to-date appreciation as bitcoin – nor its volatility, mind you – but by all accounts the Dow Jones Industrial Average has had a remarkable run in 2017. And, powered Thursday by a gain of 331.67 points (+1.39%), it topped 24,000 for the first time in history. Read more […]
The S&P GSCI was up 1.4% with a YTD return of 1.3% in November. Of the five sectors in the index, energy and agriculture were positive for the month, up 3.4% and 0.5%, precious metals was flat, while industrial metals and livestock finished the month on a negative note, down 3.2% and 5.5%, respectively. The Read more […]
Understanding the carbon exposure of smart beta strategies is important for market participants who are already implementing factor strategies and wish to incorporate carbon risk into the investment process. In a previous blog, our analysis showed that factors such as low volatility and value may be predisposed to higher carbon emissions because of their sector Read more […]
The belief that economic growth is possible without lowering carbon emissions is becoming harder to sell by the minute. A study by the London School of Economics showed that if business-as-usual emissions continue over this century, the value of risk to global financial assets in today’s terms is 1.8%, or USD 2.5 trillion. Likewise, analysis Read more […]
Sequence of returns (SoR) risk refers to the situation when the market experiences random movements in such a way that returns are not uniformly distributed. For example, in the 32-year period from 1966 to 1997, the DJIA had an annualized return of 8%. However, the returns were not evenly distributed over time. For the first Read more […]
