The forecasting crowd creates great opportunities for others
Sometimes opportunities arise because market participants cause pricing in a particular segment of the market to become highly skewed in one direction.
Insights
Why do you pay attention to financial forecasts?
It’s that time of year when inboxes get flooded with 2019 economic and financial market forecasts. As the CFA institute points out, at the beginning of 2018 the median analyst forecast for the S&P 500 calendar year return was +10.3%. The actual result ended up being -6.2%.
The central bank bar tab
A primary focus for global financial markets in Q4 2018 was the growing fear that the FED has tightened monetary policy too far, too fast and risks tipping the US economy into recession. This culminated in a severe global equity sell-off, which accelerated after the December FED meeting.
Credit is the Canary
Following last week’s meeting of the US Federal Reserve (FED), markets have become increasingly concerned that the FED is making a policy mistake in continuing to increase interest rates.
China risk goes beyond trade wars
The China economic slowdown story had been building behind the scenes long before markets decided to focus on trade hostilities with the US.
Commsec Executive Series
Tom Piotrowski speaks with Ardea IM’s Gopi Karunakaran regarding rising US interest rates, the outlook for Australian interest rates and the ActiveX Ardea Real Outcome Bond Fund (Managed Fund) (XARO).
Messy end to ’18 returns focus to fundamentals
Recently in the AFR, Tamar Hamlyn discusses how the past weeks and months have seen financial markets approaching the year-end period with decidedly less lustre than investors might like.
Interest rates matter … a lot
Even if you have no exposure to fixed income, interest rates still matter … a lot.
Bounds on the cross currency basis and why they have lessened
The cross currency basis arises when pricing in the foreign exchange market diverges from what interest rate differentials would imply. This divergence creates a small additional return above the domestic interest rate.
Lies, Damned Lies and Correlations
The carrot that alternative investment strategies often dangle in front of investors is the prospect of uncorrelated returns.