ULTUMUS-One Belt, One Road, One ETF
August 6, 2017--USA
One Belt, One Road is a Chinese government initiative aiming to build a new silk road through Central Asia and better connect China with its trading partners...
And there's something in it for ETF issuers too. KraneShares has listed a fund that (OBOR) aims to get exposure to One Belt, One Road through the MSCI Global China Infrastructure Exposure Index....
iShares is listing two plain vanilla corporate bond tracker, which track US dollar-denominated investment-grade corporate bonds with long maturities...
Asia
Australia
Continuing in the Asian infrastructure theme, ETF Securities is listing a fund in Australia that will track global infrastructure. The index interprets infrastructure broadly....
ETF Securities will also be launching an AI tracker in Australia, which tracks the ROBO Global Robotics and Automation Index.
Source: ULTUMUS-Financial Data Management
STOXX Research: Comments By Jan-Carl Plagge, Head Of Applied Research, STOXX-Oil & Gas Sector Struggled Over Hurricane Harvey
September 6, 2017--With ongoing tensions in North Korea, the recent terrorist attacks in Spain, and severe damage caused by hurricane Harvey in the US, August was a turbulent month with overall volatile global markets.
Moreover, a strong euro led European shares to reach its lowest in the past half a year. As a reaction to occurrences such as these, investors increasingly bought into safe haven assets such as gold. This in combination with recovering commodity prices led the basic resources sector to flourish in August.
Source: mondovisione.com
The World Federation of Exchanges launches joint report into role of exchanges in fostering economic development with the United Nations Conference On Trade And Development
September 6, 2017--The World Federation of Exchanges ("The WFE"), which represents more than 200 market infrastructure providers including exchanges and CCPs, today published a report examining the role of stock exchanges in promoting economic growth and sustainable development, with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ("UNCTAD").
The report-entitled The Role of Stock Exchanges in Fostering Economic Growth and Sustainable Development-will form the opening sessions of the 57th WFE Annual Meeting taking place in Bangkok, Thailand on Thursday 7 & Friday 8 September 2017. The report explains how stock exchanges operate, and why they matter; longer-term developmental challenges; and finally, how exchanges might be able to address some of those challenges.
view the The Role of Stock Exchanges in Fostering Economic Growth and Sustainable Development report
Source: WFE (The World Federation of Exchanges)
LSE completes $685 million bond indices deal with Citi
September 6, 2017--Deal to acquire Citi's fixed income indices and the Yield Book announced in May this year has closed.
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has completed its acquisition of Citgroup's fixed income indices and The Yield Book for $685 million.
First announced in May, the deal is set to provide the exchange operator with revenues and cost synergies of up to $30 million and $18 million respectively.
Source: thetradenews.com
Bitcoin Is Getting Easier To Understand, And It's Pushing Up Prices
September 5, 2017--"Crypto needn't be cryptic."
That was the tagline on an advertisement for the Crypto CopyFund, an investment vehicle offering a bunch of "the world's biggest digital currencies" in a single "innovative portfolio."
Sold by social trading network etoro, the portfolio brings together bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Ripple and Litecoin into one package.
Source: Forbes.com
A Decade After Crisis, Investors Have Stopped Hunting for Black Swans
September 5, 2017--Those who invested in tail-risk funds at their peak in September 2011 would have lost 55% of their money by now
In the wake of the global financial crisis, fear of such "black-swan" events drove some investors into hedge funds that offered protection should markets plunge. But the swans have yet to return, and such strategies have fallen out of favor.
Source: Wall Street Journal
IMF-Oil Prices and Inflation Dynamics: Evidence from Advanced and Developing Economies
September 5, 2017--Summary: We study the impact of fluctuations in global oil prices on domestic inflation using an unbalanced panel of 72 advanced and developing economies over the period from 1970 to 2015.
We find that a 10 percent increase in global oil inflation increases, on average, domestic inflation by about 0.4 percentage point on impact, with the effect vanishing after two years and being similar between advanced and developing economies. We also find that the effect is asymmetric, with positive oil price shocks having a larger effect than negative ones. The impact of oil price shocks, however, has declined over time due in large part to a better conduct of monetary policy. We further examine the transmission channels of oil price shocks on domestic inflation during the recent decades, by making use of a monthly dataset from 2000 to 2015. The results suggest that the share of transport in the CPI basket and energy subsidies are the most robust factors in explaining cross-country variations in the effects of oil price shocks during the this period.
view the IMF-Oil Prices and Inflation Dynamics:Evidence from Advanced and Developing Economies
Source: IMF
Monday Morning Memo: Are alternative UCITS a reasonable alternative for investors?
September 4, 2017--Even as the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank (FED) has begun to raise interest rates, the markets are still in a low-interest-rate environment.
Especially for Europe, some experts expect these conditions will stay around longer, even though the European Central Bank (ECB) is starting to speak about tapering. Because of the low interest rates, more and more investors are looking for alternatives, especially if they need income from their portfolios or want to bulletproof their portfolios against rising rates. In the past investors were willing to accept higher risk from issuers and/or on the duration side, and they invested in high-yield bonds or bonds with a very long duration to generate higher returns.
Source: Detlef Glow, Head of EMEA Research-Thomson Reuters Lipper
IMF Working paper-How Important is the Global Financial Cycle? Evidence from Capital Flows
September 1, 2017--Summary:
This study quantifies the importance of a Global Financial Cycle (GFCy) for capital flows. We use capital flow data dis-aggregated by direction and type between 1990Q1 and 2015Q5 for 85 countries, and conventional techniques, models and metrics.
Since the GFCy is an unobservable concept, we use two methods to represent it: directly observable variables in center economies often linked to it, such as the VIX; and indirect manifestations, proxied by common dynamic factors extracted from actual capital flows.
Our evidence seems mostly inconsistent with a significant and conspicuous GFCy; both methods combined rarely explain more than a quarter of the variation in capital flows. Succinctly, most variation in capital flows does not seem to be the result of common shocks nor stem from observables in a central country like the United States.
view the IMF Working paper--How Important is the Global Financial Cycle? Evidence from Capital Flows
Source: IMF
Infographic-The Unparalleled Explosion in Cryptocurrencies
September 1, 2017--Over 300 new coins reached $1mm market cap in 2017
After the massive Bitcoin price surge in November 2013, the popularity of launching new cryptocurrencies took off along with it.
Source: visualcapitalist.com