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China's economy cools in May as Beijing's efforts to reduce debt levels start to bite
June 14, 2018--Fixed-asset investment in first five months grows at slowest rate since records began in 1998; monthly retail sales growth slowest in 15 years
China's US$12 trillion economy suffered a downturn in May as retail sales expanded by their slowest rate in 15 years and fixed-asset investment growth in the first five months was the slowest on record, according to official figures released on Thursday.
Retail sales, a key measure of consumer spending, rose by just 8.5 per cent year on year in May, its slowest rate since June 2003. Car sales in the month fell by 1 per cent from a year earlier, while industrial production, another pillar of growth, also lost steam, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
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Source: scmp.com
BetaShares Australian ETF Review-May 2018
June 13, 2018--Industry crosses $38B mark
The Australian ETF industry continued to grow last month, reaching a record high of $38.4B. The Industry grew 1.4% in the month ($534m), the vast majority (˜90%) of which came from new inflows, rather than asset appreciation.
Read on for details of the month in ETFs.
Market cap
ASX Exchange Traded Funds Market Cap: $$38.4B-New Record High
Market cap growth for month: +1.4%, $534m
Market cap growth for the last 12 months: 32%, +$9.4B
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Source: BetaShares
CRED: How to have your diversification and income too!
June 13, 2018--Investors fearful of major equity market declines often decide to include in their portfolios relatively "safe" assets such as cash and bonds so as to limit their downside. The problem with this approach is that seeking safety can be costly in terms of forgone returns, especially given today's generally low level of interest rates.
Investing in long-dated, investment grade corporate bonds offers a potentially attractive way for investors to obtain both decent regular income returns while also seeking to limit losses in major "risk-off" periods.
Fixed-Rates Bonds-diversification, but at a cost
Fixed-rate bonds can often provide a handy source of diversification within portfolios with heavy exposure to equities. As evident in the chart below, this reflects the fact that both interest rates and equity market performance tends to follow the economic cycle. When economic conditions are weak, equities returns tend to decline due to reduced prospects for corporate earnings.
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Source: BetaShares
IMF Working Papers-Pushed Past the Limit? How Japanese Banks Reacted to Negative Interest Rates
June 13, 2018--Summary:
In this paper, we investigate how negative interest rate policy (NIRP) introduced in January 2016 by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) affected Japanese banks' lending and risk taking behavior. The BoJ's announcement was an unexpected surprise to the market and was followed by a sharp drop in equity prices of Japanese financial firms.
We exploit the cross-sectional variation in the change of share prices on the day of the announcement to measure banks' differential exposure to NIRP. We show that more exposed banks increased their credit and took on more risk compared to banks that were less exposed to negative rates.
view the IMF Working Papers-Pushed Past the Limit? How Japanese Banks Reacted to Negative Interest Rates
Source: IMF
18-171MR ASIC implements financial benchmark regulatory regime
June 12, 2018--ASIC has today finalised and published benchmarks rules, a significant benchmarks declaration, and a regulatory guide in a further series of measures towards establishing a comprehensive regulatory regime for financial benchmarks.
This follows the establishment of a robust licensing regime for financial benchmarks through the recent passage of legislation through the Parliament.
These actions by ASIC include:
declaring certain financial benchmarks to be significant
writing rules to support the implementation of a licensing regime for the administrators of significant benchmarks, and...
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Source: ASIC
Copper Basin Capital Launches MSCI All Country Asia Index Fund
June 12, 2018--Singapore-based investment fund manager, Copper Basin Capital Pte. Ltd., has launched an investment platform that allows investors to invest in one, some or all the 11 GICS(R) sectors comprising the MSCI All Country Asia Index (MSCI AC Asia Index).
The MSCI AC Asia Index, whose components and weights are selected and calculated by MSCI, Inc., is a well-known benchmark index used by sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, foundations, and other global institutional investors as a standard to measure investment manager performance for investments in Asia. The index tracks the performance of 12 Asian markets, namely, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
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Source: Copper Basin Capital Pte. Ltd.
China eases restrictions on institutional investor programs
June 12, 2018--China said Tuesday that it would ease restrictions on foreign institutional investors in a step to open its financial market wider.
New rules for the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) and the RMB Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) programs will make it easier for investors to move funds out of the Chinese mainland, according to the People's Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.
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Source: xinhuanet.com
IMF-Chart of the Week: Japan's Robots
June 12, 2018--As Japan's population ages and the birth rate is too low to sustain growth, the country is no stranger to coping with a limited number of working age people.
As shown in our Chart of the Week, which we also feature in the latest issue of Finance and Development, Japan is still a leader in robot production and industrial use. The country exported some $1.6 billion worth of industrial robots in 2016-more than the next five biggest exporters (Germany, France, Italy, United States, South Korea) combined. Japan is also one of the most robot-integrated economies in the world in terms of "robot density"-measured as the number of robots relative to humans in manufacturing and industry.
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Source: IMF
Bitcoin crashed after hacker attack in South Korea
June 11, 2018--A cryptocurrency exchange hack in South Korea jolted holders of digital assets, fuelling a $46 billion sell-off and extending this year's Bitcoin slump to more than 50 per cent.
Over the weekend. crypto exchange Coinrail tweeted that it was hacked. and noted that lesser-known cryptocurrencies such as Pundi X were among those affected. according to Google Translate. The Pundi X-bitcoin pair is the most-traded on Coinrail, CoinMarketCap data showed.
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Source: marketplus.ch
The World's Biggest Pension Fund Struggles With Sustainability
June 10, 2018--Making environmental issues a priority has proved elusive to its active managers.
Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund has nearly $1.5 trillion in assets and a legion of external asset managers running its portfolio.
The GPIF sees itself as a "super-long-term investor" with the goal of a century or more of sustainable investment and outflows. Managing money for that long is a matter of stewardship, not just picking assets-and in the past few years, the GPIF has included environmental, social and governance factors as part of its stewardship responsibilities
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Source: Bloomberg
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