Download PDF US The month of October ended with the Dow Jones recording its biggest monthly percentage gain since 1976. However, these gains soon evaporated as all US major indexes ended the week down following the 75bp increase in interest rates by the Fed and a mixed job report on Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Stock prices forecasting is a deeply researched topic, which has been enhanced by the use of Machine Learning techniques since the late 90s. In this article, we present the main methods and models employed by the current literature, along with our own proprietary model. Literature Review Over Read more…
Download PDF Introduction The mid-term elections are general elections which are held approximately at the mid-point of every US president’s 4-year term. This year they will be held on November 8th. Mid-term elections serve to select which party will take 33 or 34 out of the 100 seats in the Read more…
Download PDF US Major US indices performed well this week despite intra-week turmoil, particularly in the Nasdaq 100 and Nasdaq Composite. Russell 2000 showed the largest increase, topping last week’s close by 6.0%, with the Russell 3000 Value performing better (+5.1% WoW change) than the Russell 2000 Growth (3.2% WoW Read more…
Download PDF Introduction: Fixed Income Markets Performance High inflation and rising interest rates have governed the credit markets in 2022. Year-to-date, high yield bonds are down approximately 16% and investment grade bonds are down approximately 23%. The 2022 macroeconomic environment has wiped away the strong recovery seen by the credit Read more…
Download PDF Introduction In 2022, the number of IPOs has plummeted to lows comparable to post-financial crisis levels after the highs of 2021 with individual deal values falling due to lower valuations. In September, the number of US IPOs was a mere 20% of the ones in the same period Read more…
Download PDF Introduction The term “Liability Driven Investment”, also known as LDI, covers investment policies with the goal of covering current and future liabilities of the investor. As such, it is not a benchmark-driven investment strategy since it does not need to outperform any benchmark, but rather only needs to Read more…
Download PDF Introduction The current macroeconomic landscape is shaped by high inflation, increasing interest rates, and growing risk aversion. The diverging realities nations are facing due to the Russia-Ukraine war, the ensuing energy crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the looming global recession, and more, are putting policymakers’ decisions in the limelight. Read more…
Download PDF USA On Monday, the ISM Manufacturing PMI for September came in below expectations at a level of 50.9 against the consensus estimate of 52.2. This also marked the lowest level since May 2020. This reading supported stocks and bonds at the beginning of the week as markets interpreted Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Inflation is back. After more than 10 years with inflation rates at around 1-2% in most developed economies, governments and central banks are now being confronted with significantly higher inflation rates. This increasing rate of cost of living has prompted a majority of the central banks worldwide, Read more…
Download PDF USA The S&P 500 touched the lowest levels since December 2020 this week, reaching an 8% loss MoM. The 10-year Treasury yield reached a 12-year-high, approaching 4%. On Thursday, the S&P 500 closed at -2.1%, due to the fear of additional rate hikes, driven by higher-than-expected employment data. Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Emerging Markets Debt is making a comeback in Google search bars. The term refers to sovereign bonds issued by less-developed countries. In fact, the words “debt” and “emerging” are closely linked: debt permits a country to raise fresh capital and with that to grow towards standards reflected Read more…
Download PDF Introduction The following article is heavily inspired by the paper “Investment Strategies with VIX and VSTOXX” (Stanescu, Tunaru, 2012) which analyzed different volatility trading strategies. The strategies are either based on a simple signal or the forecasting of spreads through GARCH models. After analyzing a more recent dataset Read more…
Download PDF USA The start of the week can be described as the calm before the storm in major US stock indices, as investors digested last week’s higher-than-expected inflation print and were waiting on the Federal Reserve to announce their policy decision on Wednesday. Accordingly, no index posted significant gains Read more…
Download PDF Industry Overview Uranium is a heavy metal that has been used as a concentrated energy source for more than 60 years. It is extracted from uranium-rich minerals, such as uraninite. Uranium ore can be mined either open-pit or underground and is then crushed and treated in a mill Read more…