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- Equities
- Papers
The covid crisis prompted a period of close-to-zero interest rates around the world, and an injection of significant monetary and fiscal stimulus. This extensive support, however, proved a doubled-edged sword as while such support was essential, it combined with trade frictions to bring about a sharp surge in inflation. This was initially expected to be transitory but policy makers soon realised that severe action would be required to prevent an inflation/price spiral. Central banks around the world then began a co-ordinated hiking cycle.
- Private equity
- Papers
As investors come back from their well-earned summer breaks, one issue continues to prey on their minds: “when will I get my money back?”
Exit activity for the first half of 2024 was 27% below that for the same period in 2023. This slide in activity has continued since the peak reached in 2021 and does not show any near-term signs of reversing. Investment activity has also been lower – in the first half it was 18% below that of the same period last year.
- Private equity
- Papers
If investors were expecting the private equity market to jump back into action in 2024, they will have been disappointed.
After a subdued 2023, overall private equity investment and exit activity in the first quarter of 2024 continued to be challenged. However, there were bright areas in some segments of the market.
- Private equity
- Papers
The global economy is taking its first steps into a green revolution that is going to redefine incumbent industries as we know them and create new ones. Climate investment opportunities have already flourished as a result, despite the macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds. However, for investors pursuing climate investments today, there are multiple challenges: selecting the most attractive segment within the broad climate opportunity, seeking alignment with their own impact objectives, relying on immature track records, benchmarking impact methodologies and keeping up with a fast-changing regulation.
- Equities
- Papers
Income investing has long been of interest to equity investors seeking capital growth and attractive yields. Ageing populations and historically low interest rates have increased demand for such investments further. But income investing is not without its complexities. How can artificial intelligence help asset managers overcome these potential pitfalls and deliver consistent outperformance for clients?
- Private equity
- Papers
In contrast to liquid equities, private equity is characterised by scarce and low-frequency data with limited past history of observations. Consequently, while machine learning has gained widespread adoption in the analysis and forecasting of public equities returns, its application in private markets is more problematic.
- Wealth management
- Papers
After a decade of zero interest rate monetary policies that ended in a bloodshed for bond investors in 2022, the investment landscape has finally returned to a more traditional backdrop: higher rates and more attractive fixed income. Goldilocks and TINA (There Is No Alternative) are now gone and investors need to rethink asset allocation accordingly: fixed income, a long-time-no-see asset class is back in fashion and has a lot to offer in the next few years, especially compared to its riskier equity counterparts.
- Private equity
- Papers
Despite anecdotal reports of scattered deal doing, the odd headline-grabbing exit and multiple fund managers on the road fundraising, the overall market data continues to show subdued activity.
The post-COVID heights reached in 2021 remain a distant memory. Investment activity in Q3 was stable vs Q2 but the overall year-to-date is almost 40% down vs the same period last year.
- Equities
- Papers
After a horrendous 2022, where equities and bonds were hammered and the only safe haven appeared to be oil producers and commodities, 2023 has seen a revival of optimism in developed equity markets, while emerging markets have continued to suffer from the sluggish environment in China.
- Private equity
- Papers
We are half way through another year – a good time to take a look back and reflect on the most recent market activity to see what broad trends we can detect for the year to date. Overall, while investment activity remained subdued in Q2, we saw an encouraging increase in exits. To some, this gives the impression that things are beginning to settle down and that the worst might be behind us. However, it is still too early to tell if this was a one-off phenomenon or rather a sign of better times ahead. Nonetheless, it was welcome news to many cash-strapped investors.
- Equities
- Papers
With rates at their highest for the past two decades, and fixed income allocation at the lowest due to the bloodbath for duration in 2022, many pension plans intend to reduce their equity allocation to collect the highest coupons they’ve seen for a long time.
In this paper, we argue that all equities should not be treated equally in that reallocation move – while rebuilding a material fixed income exposure makes sense, some equity strategies should not be used to fund this reallocation, namely low volatility equities.
- Private equity
- Papers
Despite anecdotal reports of scattered deal doing, the odd headline-grabbing exit and multiple fund managers on the road fundraising, the overall market data continues to show subdued activity.
The post-COVID heights reached in 2021 remain a distant memory. Investment activity in Q3 was stable vs Q2 but the overall year-to-date is almost 40% down vs the same period last year.
- Wealth management
- Papers
Is optimism warranted as we close the first half of 2023? The performance of equity markets in H1 could suggest so. Stocks have rallied as the macro environment has provided a relatively good mix of rapidly falling inflation with growth holding up and the largest part of rate hikes in this cycle now behind us. The latter effect seems to be driving sentiment, although central bankers have been clear that their inflation job is making progress but is not complete. In the second half of the year, investors will witness economies that are slowing as credit conditions deteriorate and financial stress coming and going on a regular basis.
- Private equity
- Papers
While 2022 ended with a surge in investment activity, 2023 has begun with a whimper. Driven by continued macro uncertainty around increasing interest rates, untamed inflation and questionable growth, private equity managers have largely slowed down their investment pace. Investment activity was less than half that of the first quarter of 2022.
Meanwhile, exit activity was down by the same proportion, albeit off an already low base.