Global ETF News Older than One Year
Institutions bulk up their ETF exposure
July 20, 2015--Insurance companies, pension funds and other institutional investors are becoming increasingly comfortable with exchange-traded funds and now account for 56% of the $2 trillion invested in ETFs listed in the US and 42% of the $2.6 trillion globally.
Uptake reached a new high in 2014, with 3,798 institutions investing in one or more ETF in 2014 compared with 3,590 in the previous year.
Source: Financial News
IMF Working paper-Systemic Risk, Aggregate Demand, and Commodity Prices
July 20, 2015--Summary: The paper presents a global model with systemic and country risks, as well as commodity prices.We show that systemic risk shocks have an important impact on world economic activity, with the busts in world output gap corresponding to unobserved systemic risk associated with major financial events.
In addition, systemic risk shocks are shown to be important drivers of output gaps while country risk premium shocks can have important effects on the trade balance. Commodity prices, in particular the price of oil, are shown to be demand driven. The model performs well at one-and four-quarter horizons compared to a survey of analysts' forecasts. In addition, systemic risk shocks explain a large share of the forecast variance for the world output gap, country output gaps, the price of oil, and country risk premiums. The importance of systemic risk shocks lends support for financial surveillance with a systemic focus.
Source: IMF
IMF Working paper-From Systemic Banking Crises to Fiscal Costs: Risk Factors
July 20, 2015--Summary: This paper examines the risk factors associated with fiscal costs of systemic banking crises using cross-country data.
We differentiate between immediate direct fiscal costs of government intervention (e.g., recapitalization and asset purchases) and overall fiscal costs of banking crises as proxied by changes in the public debt-to-GDP ratio. We find that both direct and overall fiscal costs of banking crises are high when countries enter the crisis with large banking sectors that rely on external funding, have leveraged non-financial private sectors, and use guarantees on bank liabilities during the crisis. The better quality of banking supervision and the higher coverage of deposit insurance help, however, alleviate the direct fiscal costs. We also identify a possible policy trade-off: costly short-term interventions are not necessarily associated with larger increases in public debt, supporting the thesis that immediate intervention may be actually cost-effective over time.
Source: IMF
Gold-mining index drops to lowest in 14 years
July 20, 2015--The index of gold-mining stocks fell to the lowest since April 2001 after the precious metal slid to a five-year low and local producers battle rising costs.
The five-member FTSE/JSE Africa Gold Mining Index dropped as much as 5.5%, Harmony Gold [JSE:HAR] Mining led the decline, losing as much as 7.3% to the lowest since January 1998.
Source: FIN24
The Economy of Things
July 19, 2015--The Internet of Things is poised to turn the physical assets all around us into participants in real-time global digital markets-indexed, searched, and traded as any online commodity.
This report, produced by IBM in collaboration with Oxford Economics, explores the impact of this transformation, looking first at a historical case of digital industry disruption, then presenting the findings of macro-economic case studies.
view the The Economy of Things-Extracting new value from the Internet of Things
Source: IBM
Emerging Markets Had Biggest Outflow Since 2009, JPMorgan Says
July 17, 2015--Capital outflows reached $120 billion in the second quarter
Investors pulled $142 billion from China during the period
Capital outflows from developing countries reached $120 billion last quarter, the most since 2009, fueled by an exodus from China amid concern over the strength of the country's economy, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Source: Bloomberg
IG Group to launch ETF portfolios in partnership with BlackRock
July 16, 2015--IG Group clients to be offered a range of ETF-based investment portfolios constructed by IG Group using Model Portfolios from BlackRock
Launch aimed for 2016
IG Group, the online trading platform, will offer IG clients a range of exchange traded fund-based investment portfolios through IG Group's stockbroking platform. This is part of a wider offering from IG Group that includes stockbroking, contracts for difference (CFD) trading and spread betting.
Source: IG Group
BDs Increasing Protection Against Cyber Breaches, Survey Finds
Sutherland, FSI poll gauges BDs' cybersecurity policies
July 15, 2015--Thirty-two percent of broker-dealers polled in a just-released cybersecurity survey experienced a cybersecurity incident in 2013 or 2014,
with a large portion of them (86%) also stating they carry cyber-insurance and have policies covering costs related to cyber-incidents attributable to vendors.
Source: thinkadvisor.com
What The Mainstream Media Missed From The BRICS And SCO Summits
July 15, 2015--The Ufa Summits were so wildly successful that most media outlets couldn't keep track of everything that transpired.
The most widely known achievements to have come out of the BRICS and SCO Summits in Ufa are the BRICS New Development Bank and India and Pakistan's joint accession to the SCO, but that doesn't mean that they were the only takeaways.
Source: emergingequity.org
Bond Traders Face 'Million Dollar Question' on Global Growth Bet
July 14, 2015--What do bond traders know about the world economy that other investors are missing?
That's what's puzzling David Woo, head of global rates and currencies at Bank of America Corp. in New York.
Source: Bloomberg
