Global ETF News Older than One Year
Oil's slide hands junk bond ETFs their biggest weekly drop since February
November 16, 2018--The tumbling price of crude oil in the past fortnight has put two of the biggest junk bond exchange traded funds on track for their worst weekly performances in nine months.
The two ETFs, with a combined market capitalisation of nearly $22bn, are both heavily weighted towards oil and gas companies, including a plethora of indebted shale producers, and are therefore particularly sensitive to swings in crude prices.
Source: FT.com
Stablecoins are crypto sector's next big bet
November 16, 2018--'Hybrid' cryptocurrencies are often pegged to real assets, including fiat currencies
When Elizabeth White set up a company in early 2017 to help new-found bitcoin millionaires buy luxury goods such as Lamborghinis and yachts, she quickly encountered a major problem: crypto price volatility.
Source: FT.com
Basel Committee publishes more details on global systemically important banks
November 16, 2018--The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision today published further information related to its 2018 assessment of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs), including additional details to help understand the scoring methodology.
The publication accompanies the Financial Stability Board's release of the updated list of G-SIBs and includes:
a list of all the banks in the assessment sample;
the denominators of each of the 12 high-level indicators used to calculate the banks' scores;
for the first time, the 12 high-level indicators for each bank in the sample used to calculate these denominators;
Source: BIS
Islamic Countries Challenge USD 'Sanctioning Tool' With Planned Common Cryptocurrency
November 16, 2018--Muslim countries around the world are planning to push back against the U.S. dollar's long global dominance by creating a common digital currency for use in Islamic states.
The dollar has evolved into a "sanctioning tool," charged Erol Yarar, chairman of the Muslim-focused business lobby group International Business Forum (IBF). It has lost its purpose as an international trading currency, he said.
Source: bitcoin.com
IMF Working Papers-Populism and Civil Society
November 16, 2018--Summary:
Populists claim to be the only legitimate representative of the people. Does it mean that there is no space for civil society? The issue is important because since Tocqueville (1835), associations and civil society have been recognized as a key factor in a healthy liberal democracy.
We ask two questions: 1) do individuals who are members of civil associations vote less for populist parties? 2)does membership in associations decrease when populist parties are in power? We answer thesequestions looking at the experiences of Europe, which has a rich civil society tradition, as well as of Latin America, which already has a long history of populists in power. The main findings are that individuals belonging to associations are less likely by 2.4 to 4.2 percent to vote for populist parties, which is large considering that the average vote share for populist parties is from 10 to 15 percent. The effect is strong particularly after the global financial crisis, with the important caveat that membership in trade unions has unclear effects.
view the IMF Working Papers-Populism and Civil Society
Source: IMF
Big investors demand greater non-financial reporting disclosure
November 15, 2018--BlackRock and Vanguard sign up to common set of metrics for societal and workforce issues.
Source: FT.com
Sounding the Alarm on Leveraged Lending
November 15, 2018--We warned in the most recent Global Financial Stability Report that speculative excesses in some financial markets may be approaching a threatening level. For evidence, look no further than the $1.3 trillion global market for so-called leverage loans, which has some analysts and academics sounding the alarm on a dangerous deterioration in lending standards. They have a point.
This growing segment of the financial world involves loans, usually arranged by a syndicate of banks, to companies that are heavily indebted or have weak credit ratings. These loans are called "leveraged" because the ratio of the borrower's debt to assets or earnings significantly exceeds industry norms.
Source: IMF
MSCI to Rename Real Estate Indexes and Benchmarks to Mirror Investors' Integration of Real Estate into Real Assets Portfolio Allocations
November 14, 2018--MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI), a leading provider of research-based indexes
and analytics, announces that all IPD indexes and benchmarks will be renamed the MSCI Private Real
Assets Indexes, effective December 8, 2018 to mirror the changes in investors' portfolios.
Jay McNamara, Head of Real Estate at MSCI, said: "Renaming the IPD indexes allows us to provide clients with a single, clear and consistent collection of private real assets indexes,...
Net financial inflows-including debt and equity-jumped to $1.11 trillion, the highest level in four years, the report indicates.
Source: World Bank
World Economic Forum-Regional Risks for Doing Business
We can see signs of how vulnerable many of the complex systems that make up our world are: from the environmental to the financial and the societal to the geopolitical, the signs of strain are evident.
In The Global Risks Report 2018 we noted that this is now a multipolar and multiconceptual world-not only has global power shifted, but differences in norms and values among the world's powers have become more important. Predictions-particularly in the West-that global systems would converge have not stood the test of time and we are moving into uncharted international waters. view the World Economic Forum Insight Report
Regional Risks for Doing Business 2018
Source: World Economic Forum
November 12, 2018--The World Economic Forum has been publishing The Global Risks Report since 2006, highlighting each year the vulnerability of our increasingly networked and interconnected world to volatility and disruption. The relevance of the risk perspective has only increased with time. Globally, we have been living through a period of unprecedented improvements in living standards, but this period is also unsettled and unsettling.
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