Download PDF Introduction The purpose of this article is to investigate whether gold, and in particular its spot returns against other currencies, display some correlation with other macroeconomic drivers, particularly with monetary policy decisions by Central banks. Gold: Anti-Cyclical Asset or simple Commodity? In the realm of financial markets and Read more…
Download PDF Introduction In 2022, rates traders have had to navigate a landscape of deteriorating liquidity in sovereign debt markets. Over the past few years, there have been multiple episodes of severe illiquidity in US Treasuries and related markets. Firstly, US repo rates spiked in September 2019, with intraday secured Read more…
Download PDF Abstract While the literature investigating risk premia driving the cross section of stock returns is extensive, fewer studies analyze corporate bond returns. We set out to understand which factors and firm characteristics command a premium in terms of expected returns on corporate bonds, both in the investment grade Read more…
Download PDF One topic has dominated the financial news recently: tech-stocks falling out of favor with investors. The pandemic-era dominance of tech has come to an end, with US value stocks outperforming growth by around 10% year to date. Most tech-stocks have collapsed over the last 3 months, with the Read more…
Download PDF Introduction A specter is in the horizon for US investors: the specter of inflation. As the fed policy objectives shifted toward allowing a brief term inflation “overshoot” the 10-year and 5-year breakeven inflation rates, the differential between TIPS and nominal bond yields, have reached new heights in the Read more…
Pension funds are key investors in the market, with around $27.6tn in assets as of 2018. In this article, we will present a brief overview of pension schemes and funds around the world, with a focus on the challenges that pension funds will have to face in the near future. Read more…
In a world of excessive liquidity, where open market operations by central banks are ineffective, unconventional and unheard-of monetary policies need sometimes to be applied. In this article we will briefly discuss of the overnight interbank lending market in Europe (and changes in how its respective index is calculated) and Read more…
Greek Banking Sector The Greek banking system is built around four large systemic banks, whose summary statistics you can see in the table below. All four banks have undergone a significant restructuring process, whereby both the asset value and the market capitalization went down a lot. In addition, a number Read more…
Introduction In this paper, we will try to explain what are the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) and Euro OverNight Index Average (Eonia) rates, what drives the spread between them and specifically why this was the case during the 2008 financial crisis. Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) rates are the Read more…
In the current increasing interest rate environment, the debate about the controversial but nevertheless important benchmark has sparked off again. This is why, we thought it relevant to provide in the following article a refresher on the history and functioning of the London Interbank Offered Rate, as well as examine Read more…
Introduction As we noted in our final publication of 2017, the year 2017 was characterized by very low volatility and stable positive returns on the majority of stock markets. This took place even despite the start of stimulus withdrawal by major central banks which was seen in the gradual increase Read more…
Introduction The low-interest rate environment which has characterised the markets since the breakout of the financial crisis left fixed-income investors with one way to continue to benefit from high yields: emerging markets. In addition to this, China started a credit expansion in order to keep the levels of GDP growth Read more…
Over the last couple of months Turkey has been greatly divided over President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s proposal to augment the executive powers of his position. Ultimately, Erdoğan claimed victory by the slimmest of margins last Sunday as 51% of Turks stood by his side in a vote whose integrity is Read more…
The sharp increase in UK property prices-predominantly but not limited to the London area- over the last year has led many to believe such a trend has become unsustainable. According to Nationwide Building Society, Real estate prices registered an 18% annual change in London since 2013, while the average UK Read more…
The Emerging Markets sell-off of late January highlighted the importance of the Chinese economy in the global markets and the instability of its financial sector. China has pulled global growth in the last decade, attracting investments, exporting goods all over the world and financing businesses and governments, especially the US. Read more…