Global ETF News Older than One Year
World Bank-Year in Review: 2015 in 12 charts
December 24, 2015--Now that we've reached the end of 2015, it's clear this was a year of major milestones, emerging trends, and new beginnings.
Among other things, 2015 marked a historic drop in poverty, a major climate change agreement, and record low child and maternal mortality rates. Take a look at what the data show.
1. The Global Poverty Rate Fell below 10%
2. The World Reached an Accord on Climate Change
3. A Record Number of People Were Forcibly Displaced
Source: World Bank
IMF Working paper-International Sovereign Bonds by Emerging Markets and Developing Economies: Drivers of Issuance and Spreads
December 24, 2015--Summary: What determines the ability of low-income developing countries to issue bonds in international capital and what explains the spreads on these bonds?
This paper examines these questions using a dataset that includes emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) that issued sovereign bonds at least once during the period 1995-2013 as well as those that did not. We find that an EMDE is more likely to issue a bond when, in comparison with non-issuing peers, it is larger in economic size, has higher per capita GDP, and has stronger macroeconomic fundamentals and government. Spreads on sovereign bonds are lower for countries with strong external and fiscal positions, as well as robust economic growth and government effectiveness. With regard to global factors, the results show that sovereign bond spreads are reduced in periods of lower market volatility.
Source: IMF
IMF Working paper-How External Factors Affect Domestic Economy: Nowcasting an Emerging Market
December 23, 2015--Summary: External headwinds, together with domestic vulnerabilities, have loomed over the prospects of emerging markets in recent years.
We propose an empirical toolbox to quantify the impact of external macro-financial shocks on domestic economies in parsimonious way. Our model is a Bayesian VAR consisting of two blocks representing home and foreign factors, which is particularly useful for small open economies. By exploiting the mixed-frequency nature of the model, we show how the toolbox can be used for "nowcasting" the output growth. The conditional forecast results illustrate that regular updates of external information, as well as domestic leading indicators, would significantly enhance the accuracy of forecasts. Moreover, the analysis of variance decompositions shows that external shocks are important drivers of the domestic business cycle.
Source: IMF
IMF-March Madness in Wall Street: (What) Does the Market Learn from Stress Tests?
December 23, 2015--Summary: Annual stress tests have become a regular part of the supervisors' toolkit following the global financial crisis. We investigate their capital market implications in the United States by looking at price and trade reactions, information asymmetry and uncertainty indicators, and bank activities.
The evidence we present supports the notion that there is important new information in stress tests, especially at times of financial distress. Moreover, public disclosure seems to help reduce informational asymmetries. Importantly, public disclosure of stress test results (and methodology) does not seem to have reduced private incentives to generate information or to have led to distorted incentives.
Source: IMF
2015 second hottest year on record for Europe
December 23, 2015--The year 2015 will be the second hottest on record in Europe, with mean annual temperatures just above the 2007 average and below the record set in 2014, according to an analysis by one of the World Meteorological Organization's regional climate centres.
Much of eastern Europe was exceptionally warm, with temperatures higher than in 2014. Only in parts of Ireland were temperatures lower than the 1981-2010 long-term average, according to the Climate Indicator Bulletin from WMO's European Regional Climate Centre node on Climate Data operated by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, KMNI.
Source: World Meteorological Organization
Central Banks To Issue Digital Currencies?
December 23, 2015--Central bankers may have driven numerous economies into ruin. They may continue to drive up the cost of living and contribute to economic inequality.
But rest assured, they are learning from their mistakes and vow to do everything they can to correct them. To that end, central bankers are looking into issuing their own digital currencies.
Source:emergingequity.org/
Nigeria: U.S. Overtakes Russia As World's Largest Producer of Crude Oil
December 22, 2015-- The United States is now the world's largest oil and natural gas liquids exporter and would remain so for a while, overtaking both Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Source: AllAfrica.com
Using derivatives to increase and protect returns
December 22, 2015--Several asset owners and fund managers have increased the use of derivatives as a way to enhance performance as well as reduce risk and gain tactical or structural exposure to other markets, writes BNP Paribas Securities Services' Natalie Floate.
Tactical derivatives positions are an efficient way to maintain strategic asset allocation during transitions, which have been significant in the period leading up to the MySuper reform.
Source: investordaily.com.au
Regulating the Gig Economy
December 22, 2015--By some measures, 40% of US workers will be in non-standard jobs by the year 2020. These could be a series of part time roles, or as a freelance contractor working via a technology platform such as Uber.
In the developing world, these forms of employment are also increasing at a time when the push to move employment from the informal to the formal sector is gathering pace. The great question is therefore how do you regulate these working arrangements?
Source: World Bank
ETF issuers with currency-hedged ETFs ride high on strong dollar
December 22, 2015--As the U.S. dollar strengthened throughout 2015, managers of currency-hedging exchange-traded funds had a banner year-they collected one of every four dollars invested in U.S. ETFs and rewarded their investors well
Now, they are doubling down with plans for as many as 41 new currency-hedging funds on file with regulators. But many of those funds may come to market after the easy money in currency hedging has been made.
Source: Reuters
