Sometimes, finding the right investment approach can feel like trying to get a book onto the best-sellers list: a bit of strategy, a bit of prediction and a whole lot of luck.
An observation that may be made about the current economic condition is that it is penalizing savers in favour of spenders. Pension plans in particular, which represent the interests of long-term savers in many jurisdictions, are adversely affected by these conditions. Not the least of this impact is due to challenges from low interest rates.
With the announcement of J.P. Morgan’s recent trading missteps comes another round of financial sector (and overall market) angst.
Investors were recently left wondering whether they were “Muppet” investors, when they heard that one major financial institution has been referring to its clients as “Muppets.” So it got me thinking. Am I a Muppet investor?
The Canadian dollar is breaking through parity again and has been described by currency traders as the “master of the universe.” So is this a good time to revisit currency-hedging programs?
With all this skepticism about traditional alternative investments, what choices are left for a pension fund manager?
Financial institutions use the acronym ALM to describe what is now referred to as LDI (liability driven investing) by the pension industry. Why are there two acronyms, and how do they differ?
There are several varieties of inflation: cost-push inflation, which can derive from a number of factors, including higher commodity prices or wage-price spirals; demand-pull inflation, where excessive aggregate demand causes shortages and pushes up prices; and monetary-driven inflation, where governments increase the monetary supply in attempts to devalue their currency and manage their fiscal obligations. […]
Is bigger better? That’s the question posed by Alexander Dyck and Lukasz Pomorski, professors of finance at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, in their study, Is bigger better? Size and Performance in Pension Plan Management. The authors concluded that larger plans outperform smaller ones by 43-50 basis points per year due primarily […]
“Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis Carroll In the land of managing investment portfolios, it all hinges on identifying sensible investment ideas to add value, as frequently as possible, and with as much conviction as possible. The high conviction is necessary because typically managers have to (i) […]