central banks – Benefits Canada.com

2024 DC Investment Forum: The importance of ESG factors in bond investing

Jennifer Paterson — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 12:53:45 +0000

Rising food, energy and housing prices aren’t just pocketbook issues for consumers or election fodder for politicians, they’re also social risk factors, indicators of a country’s economic health and highly important to bond investors, said Reina Berlien, head of environmental, social and governance at Brandywine Global Investment Management. While ESG factors may not seem important […]

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2023 Risk Management Conference: How labour market pressures are affecting inflation rates

bmcgovern — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 11:56:15 +0000

A tight labour market will have to loosen up in order to help reduce inflation rates, said Ilan Kolet, institutional portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments, during the Canadian Investment Review’s 2023 Risk Management Conference. In 2022, inflation severely impacted the dynamic between stocks and bonds leading to a painful year, he said. “[Inflation] increases the correlation between […]

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2023 GIC coverage: Saving the global economy from conventional thinking

Gideon Scanlon — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 11:59:39 +0000

If Irish economist David McWilliams is to be believed, overconfident fools are tampering with the global economy. “If I were an American, Canadian or — God forbid — a British economist, . . . I’d come here today armed with graphs and charts and all that malarkey,” he said during the keynote session at the […]

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Canadian DB pension plans down 12.8% in 2022: report

Gideon Scanlon — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 20:00:22 +0000

The median Canadian defined benefit pension plan returned 2.8 per cent during the last quarter of 2022 after facing losses of 12.8 per cent over the course of the year, according to a new report by Northern Trust Canada. The report draws from the Northern Trust Canada universe, which tracks the performance of Canadian DB plans. […]

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2022 DBIF coverage: 2023 market insights and DB plan portfolio positioning

Gideon Scanlon — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 12:59:29 +0000

Consensus expectations for U.S. inflation and interest rates in 2023 are overly optimistic, said Robert Forsyth, head of SPDR exchange-traded funds strategy and research at State Street Global Advisors SPDR, during a session at the Canadian Investment Review‘s 2022 Defined Benefit Investment Forum. “Our view is that the futures market is still pricing in an […]

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European central bank expected to raise interest rates by 25 basis points

Gideon Scanlon — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 16:30:50 +0000

The European Central Bank is expected to raise interest rates for the first time since 2011. In a statement, the bank said it plans to raise interest rates by 25 points on July 21, from negative 0.5 per cent to negative 0.25 per cent. The decision comes in response to inflationary pressures, which hit 8.1 […]

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Fed raising key rate to curb inflation

Gideon Scanlon — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 13:00:39 +0000

The U.S. Federal Reserve is launching a high-risk effort to tame inflation, raising its benchmark short-term interest rate and signaling up to seven rate hikes. The central bank raised its key rate by a quarter-point hike, which it had pinned near zero since March 2020. In early March 2022, the Bank of Canada announced it […]

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Two years later: DB plans out of the pandemic frying pan, into the geopolitical fire

Gideon Scanlon — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 14:30:01 +0000

The second year of the coronavirus pandemic offered defined benefit pension plan sponsors a reprieve from the chaos sown in financial markets during its first year. “A lot of pension plans ended up roughly where they started in 2020, but it was a very bumpy road,” says Gavin Benjamin, a retirement and financial solutions partner […]

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DB pensions staring down paltry bond returns heading into 2021

mschmit — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 05:35:02 +0000

Central banks slowing their quantitative easing policies and economic improvements off the back of wide-scale vaccination efforts should both provide bond yields with a modest boost in 2021. But that won’t give defined benefit pension plan sponsors much relief. “You hear the phrase ‘low for long’ and I would agree we’re in an extended period […]

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A path forward for institutional investors amid market headwinds

mschmit — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 04:02:24 +0000

The impact of powerful trends, including aging populations and growing debt levels in the world’s largest economies, has been somewhat mitigated in recent years by the ongoing involvement of central banks in markets and declining interest rates. However, with rates at historic lows, this is not something that can be relied on over the next […]

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