Management

ESMA is concerned "Closet indexing" may harm investors as they are not receiving the service or risk/return profile they expect based on the fund’s disclosure documents while potentially paying higher fees compared to those typically charged for passive management.

Institutional investors worldwide say it is challenging to find diversification among traditional asset classes, with more than half (54%) saying stocks and bonds are too highly correlated to provide distinctive sources of return, according to a recent survey by Natixis Global Asset Management...

With increasing concern over China’s growth, investors are significantly less confident in the global economic outlook, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey for January. Allocations to equities have fallen sharply, while cash holdings have risen.

For all that happened in 2015, one has to wonder if it will be lost in the textbooks as a pretty uneventful year. Sure it was the year of Ukraine, the Volkswagen scandal, “Unicorns”, ISIS, China’s slowdown, Fed “liftoff”, and another chapter in the Greece drama, but what really changed?

For some time, commentators have been itching to call the top of the great bond bull market. They point to improving economic conditions in the developed economies, a tightening US labour market and a long-awaited normalisation of interest rate policy after many years of extraordinary stimulus as evidence for their case.