US The Thanksgiving holiday was accompanied by record highs on Wall Street: a beat in US GDP growth and – this never gets old – positive comments from President Donald’s Trump about a closing on the final stages with a partial trade deal with China lead to a bullish sentiment. Read more…
We gave a brief introduction to put writing strategies already earlier this semester. We since thought about possible modifications of such strategies and their effects on return characteristics and return predictability. The positive returns of put writing strategies can be motivated from risk premia, as we show in the first Read more…
Real estate is traditionally associated with large capital expenditures and not a high amount of liquidity. Hence, the sector is usually reserved for long-term investments by high net worth individuals. Even more so, commercial use buildings are out of reach for most private individual’s pockets, making developers and other large Read more…
Introduction In this article, we will try to provide an insight on green bonds, a quickly growing new star of impact investing trends in the world. A total of US$580bn in green bonds were sold up to the year 2018, and at least another US$170bn more are expected to be Read more…
In this article, we introduce distressed debt securities. Then, we investigate what are the problems of valuing a company in financial distress and how we can address those problems. Finally, we present some investment strategies that can be applied when a company is financially distressed. Overview Distressed companies are companies Read more…
US Last week the S&P500 was slightly down by 0.19% and closed the week at 3110,29 points. The index remained above the 3100 threshold while the yield on the US 10 year treasury was down 6 basis points at 1.774. The US market was once again driven by the phase-one Read more…
US The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 28k mark with a close at 28,004.89 on Friday, recording a weekly gain of 1.2%. The S&P 500 closed at 3,120.46 up 0.9% w-o-w. These numbers outline a 6th consecutive week of gains for the index – for the first time in Read more…
Following the article from last week, we now investigate the Inflation Risk Premium. We start by introducing the role inflation plays in monetary policy decisions and what are the mechanics of the Inflation Risk Premium, which is one of the most important drivers of market-based inflation rate. Then we analyse Read more…
At the beginning of a new election term, Argentina finds itself in another economic crisis. After Alberto Fernández, a centre-left opposition leader, defeated president Mauricio Macri in election primary this August, the Argentine peso lost 33% of its value in three days, hitting a new record low. But this was Read more…
US The rally in the U.S. markets continued this week, sustained by the optimistic outlook on the resolution of the US-China trade disputes. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were both up 0.85% w-o-w, closing at 3,093.08 and 8,457.31, respectively. The Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded a weekly gain Read more…
Introduction Over the past ten years, Germany has always been the leading European country in terms of economic growth. Notwithstanding a series of emergencies arising from Southern Europe, such as the Greek government-debt crisis and the Italian political instability, the federation was able to deliver an impressive economic performance, corroborated Read more…
“Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair” Sam Ewing Inflation is an elusive phenomenon which is sometimes dubbed a “hidden tax”, eroding purchasing power and returns. This article is the first in a series of Read more…
In mid-September, there has been a liquidity crisis in the money market of secured overnight borrowing. We have analyzed this in an article published one month ago, headed “Liquidity Squeeze: What is the Repo-Scarcity Premium?”. Since then, the Federal Reserve proceeded to inject more than 230 billion over the period Read more…
The use of Copper and Gold Can commodities help us predict future interest rate movements? In this article, we will analyze the relationship between the spot prices of copper and gold and the ratio between them to predict future interest rates. Copper is used in the majority of industries such Read more…
US U.S. markets were slightly higher last week as Q3 earnings season spurred some optimism, but global growth concerns limited it. The S&P 500 was up 0.4% w-o-w, closing at 2,986 points, while the DJIA fell 1%, ending at 26,770. The Nasdaq Composite decreased 67 points (0.8%) to 8,089. On Read more…