General

About $23 trillion in total global assets was professionally managed under environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies in 2016, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance. That figure represented a 25% increase over 2014. Assuming that stampede into ESG has maintained a similar pace into 2018, the total AUM of global ESG strategies could approach or even […]

Despite expending substantial resources on a formal financial education, I did not encounter the Kelly criterion in business school or the CFA curriculum. I came across it almost by accident, in William Poundstone’s delightful book Fortune’s Formula. Created in 1956 by John Kelly, a Bell Labs scientist, the Kelly criterion is a formula for sizing […]

Keeping Your Dividend Edge: Strategies for Growing and Protecting Your Dividends. 2016. Todd Wenning, CFA. In Keeping Your Dividend Edge: Strategies for Growing and Protecting Your Dividends, Todd Wenning, CFA, an equity analyst, investor, and writer based in Cincinnati, describes the new market environment that necessitates a revised approach for selecting and monitoring dividend-paying stocks. He succinctly describes […]

Ever louder warnings that US stocks are now improbably overpriced on many measures have fired up growing interest in commodities as a way to diversify portfolios, particularly amid rallies in such commodities as oil, grains, fertilizer, and some metals. Investors need to know how commodities are expected to perform under different economic circumstances and, consequently, […]

This is the second installment in the Cryptocurrenices series. It explores how blockchain technology works and how it could augment, transform, and disrupt an array of economic sectors. The first edition examined the rise of decentralized money. Blockchain technology is the “engine” that powers cryptocurrency networks and it is rapidly gaining recognition among businesses. But […]

CFA Institute has transformed its annual conference for 2021, with a binge-worthy digital format and an exciting slate of speakers. Join us for the Alpha Summit on 18 May 2021. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has transformed the fields of economics and investing. At their most basic, his revelations demonstrate that human beings and the decisions they […]

India’s economy will experience the ordinary progress of a century over the next decade. That sentence is as true now as it was in 1952 when Donald B. Macurda wrote of investment opportunities in India for the CFA Institute Financial Analysts Journal. The appeal was humanitarian, but also prophetic. He wrote that the country “should […]

Daniel Kahneman, a winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, wrote that “The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics.” When Richard Thaler, the father of behavioral economics, won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017, the phrase “loss aversion” appeared 24 times in the Nobel Prize […]

Assets in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have soared across the globe in recent years, eclipsing the $4.5-trillion mark at the close of 2017. This astronomical growth raises a number of questions not only about the future of ETFs, but also about that of the investing world more generally. For perspective on these questions, we spoke with Inside […]

You turn on the financial news channel one morning to find the S&P 500 has soared past the 2800 mark. Stock reports indicate ongoing bullishness and you realize you have the opportunity to make more money if you go overweight in equities. Then this thought process abruptly stops. You begin to question whether the market will […]

Are you bullish or bearish on India? This is a natural question to debate for anyone interested in global markets. And it has no easy answers. Countries as large as India turn bulls into bears and vice versa all the time. Experts say both optimists and pessimists can get India wrong. Annual Conference Keynote Haiyan Wang […]

Posted In: Drivers of Value, Economics, Equity Investments, Fixed Income, History & Geopolitics, Leadership, Management & Communication Skills, Performance Measurement & Evaluation, Philosophy, Portfolio Management, Quantitative Methods, Risk Management, Standards, Ethics & Regulations (SER) 1. Chart Crimes and Misdemeanors Truth is relative, falsehoods are seductive, and shortcuts are commonplace. Chart crimes are a clear manifestation […]