While speaking at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2020 Global Investment Conference in September, Catherine Yeung, investment director at Fidelity International, provided an overview of key trends for investors to watch, given the rising prominence of China in global portfolios. In the wake of the coronavirus crisis, e-commerce usage across the country has accelerated, said Yeung. […]
With U.S. stock prices exceeding pre-coronavirus highs and credit spreads nearly as tight as before the pandemic, investors are signalling overconfidence in the market, says Rob Almeida, portfolio manager and global investment strategist at MFS Investment Management. While polls and betting odds appear to be favouring a Joe Biden win, that doesn’t align with what […]
Developing economies in Asia will contract in 2020, the first such downturn in nearly 60 years, the Asian Development Bank said Tuesday in an update to its forecasts. The update of the ADB’s outlook estimates the regional economy will contract 0.7 per cent this year, recovering to 6.8 per cent growth in 2021. Conditions could […]
In China, keeping the novel coronavirus under control is key to maintaining the economic recovery, and there are reasons to be optimistic, despite a breakdown in U.S.-China relations. In the last two weeks of August, there were a total of only 187 new coronavirus cases in China, and none of those were the result of […]
The rallying cry that China is simply too significant a part of the world’s economy to leave out of a well-diversified portfolio is about to be last year’s cliché. For the moment, the country remains the second largest economic engine in the world, but its stunning growth in just the past few years has investors […]
China’s V-shaped economic recovery continued for a fourth consecutive month in June, led by strong domestic demand. And if the novel coronavirus remains under control, China can remain the world’s best consumer story. In China, consumer spending came back with force. Inflation-adjusted retail sales plummeted to a 23.7 per cent year-over-year decline in January and […]
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other oil-producing nations on Sunday finalized an unprecedented production cut of nearly 10 million barrels, or a tenth of global supply, in hopes of boosting crashing prices amid the coronavirus pandemic and a price war, officials said. “This could be the largest reduction in production from […]
The majority (79 per cent) of pension fund and private equity professionals expect their passive private equity allocations to either stay the same or increase in 2020, according to a new survey by Torys LLP. Pension funds, in particular, cited competition for new investment opportunities (65 per cent) and pressure from limited partners to provide co-investment […]
The phase one trade deal between the U.S. and China was presented by the Trump administration as an “historic and enforceable” agreement that “begins rebalancing the U.S.‑China trade relationship.” While the pact makes incremental progress on issues like purchases of U.S. exports and market access, it more likely signals a détente, suggesting that trade tensions […]
Pension funds view geopolitical risk as the top risk to the financial system, followed by economic risk and climate risk, according to the Global Risk Institute in Financial Services’ annual risk outlook survey for 2019-2020. While the survey wasn’t technically broken down by pension plans versus other institutional investors, Sonia Baxendale, chief executive officer of […]