New and Notable

A growing caution from employers in response to market uncertainty, undimmed expectations of candidates, a growing acknowledgement of skill gaps and their impact on innovation are among trends highlighted in the annual recruitment and salary guide.

20 March 2020 | Hays

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2019 update of WWF’s annual assessment, which benchmarks major ASEAN banks’ ESG integration against a proprietary framework, reviews the sustainable finance landscape, and recommends ways for the ASEAN banking sector to drive sustainable development.

26 August 2019 | WWF: Chen Ted Kin, Jeanne Stampe, Naomin Tan

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Advancements in satellite technology have made it possible to estimate macro-economic variables using commercial satellite data. Research suggests that such estimates can undermine governments’ control over macro-economic announcements.

31 December 2019 | Abhiroop Mukherjee,  George Panayotov, Janghoon Shon

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An analysis of a company’s behavior under an emergency such as the COVID-19 epidemic helps evaluate its resilience. The ESG Epidemic Control Valuation model developed by SynTao Green Finance serves as a supplement to the overall ESG assessment.

20 March 2020 | SynTao Green Finance

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China’s express-delivery sector will transit from a labour-intensive industry to a capital-and-technology intensive one, as key participants cut unit costs and improve efficiency through scale expansion and technological advancement.

4 March 2020 | Fitch Ratings: Karl Shen, Jenny Huang, Ying Wang

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This report summarizes the analysis of 22 asset managers’ disclosures on their implementation of responsible investment (RI). It outlines how these asset managers disclose against WWF’s RI framework and how they can further push the frontier of RI.

27 January 2020 | WWF Singapore: Marie Gauthier, Keith Lee, Lauren Lynch, Lise Pretorius, Jeanne Stampe

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China is at the centre of the world’s production needs. As the country continues to grapple with containing the contagion, production lines remain quiet, factories remain shut, and millions of workers are either displaced or restricted in movement.

29 February 2020 | MioTech: Jason Tu, Cara Liu, Maya Li

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A historical overview of the green, social, and sustainable bonds in Asia-Pacific region presents the challenges faced by sustainability-conscious international investors and solutions that may be helpful in navigating those challenges.

4 March 2019 | Solactive AG, Carbon Care Asia

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This report introduces WWF’s Responsible Investment Framework. It provides context around why the framework was developed, its uses and sheds light on the underlying indicators and sub-indicators the framework analyses.

30 April 2019 | WWF Singapore: Keith Lee, Jeanne Stampe, Ted Kin Chen, Lauren Lynch, Lise Pretorius

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This webinar assesses the refinancing risk posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic and identifies Chinese corporates that face elevated risk in relation to their capital market debt maturities.

24 February 2020 | Fitch Ratings: Buddhika Piyasena, Matt Jamieson, Kalai Pillay, Ying Wang, Adrian Cheng, Laura Zhai, Kelvin Ho | Video: 46 min.

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Based in Singapore, Asia Sustainable Finance Initiative (ASFI) is a multi-stakeholder forum that promotes best-practice, science-based sustainable finance across Asia. The Annual Report summarizes ASFI’s achievements since its launch in January 2019.

3 February 2020 | WWF Singapore

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Leveraging S&P Dow Jones Indices' SPIVA U.S. Scorecard and Persistence Scorecard reports, this paper studies the degree to which outperforming funds from one period continue to beat their benchmarks thereafter.

27 February 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Berlinda Liu, Andrew Cairns

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As COVID-19 impacts business activities, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has conducted a survey of its members in Mainland China and Hong Kong SAR to understand the challenges companies face as a result of the epidemic.

9 March 2020 | ACCA Global: Eunice Chu, Yuki Qian

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What is (and isn’t) actually implied by VIX data? Steve Blumenthal, CIO at CMG Capital Management Group joins S&P DJI’s Ed Ware and Hamish Preston to explore what VIX data means and how to put Wall Street’s fear gauge to work.

23 January 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Steve Blumenthal, Ed Ware, Hamish Preston | Video: 8 min.

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In this webinar, Philip Lawlor, managing director, global markets research discusses the impact of the coronavirus on market returns and gauges its effect on the global economy, the credit cycle and market drivers, such as profits and valuations.

16 March 2020 | FTSE Russell | Video: 26 min.

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A report by China Social Investment Forum and SynTao Green Finance presented at the 7th China SIF Annual Conference focuses on the sustainable investment practices of investment funds in China and reviews the country progress in ESG investment.

12 March 2020 | China SIF, SynTao Green Finance

As the interest in ESG investments continues to grow, data is critical to ESG portfolio construction. It can inform decision making and provide grater transparency. Data scientists explore the practical applications for investors.

4 March 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Steven Bullock, Jaspreet Duhra, Manjit Jus | Webinar: 58 min.

Effects of climate change, materiality of ESG disclosures, product diversification, incorporation of ESG into fixed income, and Sustainable Development Goals as a product theme, are some of the new trends on China’s sustainable investing landscape.

12 March 2020 | SynTao Green Finance, China SIF

Low volatility strategies typically perform well when markets decline. They have been popular in recent years and some claim they are overvalued. It is possible to identify environments when low volatility strategies offer more bang for the buck?

20 February 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Fei Mei Chan, Craig J. Lazzara

The launch of futures on the S&P 500 ESG Index has expanded the ESG toolkit for market participants. S&P DJI’s Mona Naqvi joins CME Group’s Tim McCourt and DWS’ Luke Oliver to discuss. (Video: 10 min.)

9 January 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Mona Naqvi, Tim McCourt, Luke Oliver

In this report, WWF assesses sustainable banking regulations and guidelines issued by financial regulators or banking associations in ASEAN countries, and looks at whether banks headquartered in these countries meet these increasing expectations.

9 December 2019 | WWF-Singapore: Sylvain Augoyard, Ted Kin Chen, Jeanne Stampe

The aviation finance and leasing industry has seen large growth since the 1950s. This paper offers a look at the public aircraft lessors index performance against benchmarks and a performance analysis of the four acquired public listed lessors.

4 March 2020 | KPMG Ireland: David Yu, Ph.D., CFA

If manufacturers ignore coming regulatory changes, companies with large exposure to commodity-type plastic products are more vulnerable to the risks caused by the decelerating growth in plastic demand and tougher regulatory environment for plastics.

27 September 2019 | WWF-Hong Kong: Peter Rawle, Jean-Marc Champagne, Sam Hilton

This study analyses China’s key investment characteristics: geographical preferences, investment compositions, and structural changes in industrial and foreign policies, such as Made in China 2025, financial liberalization, and One Belt One Road.

11 February 2020 | Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise: David Yu, Ph.D., CFA

After an epic plunge, US stocks have a high probability of rebound, but the economic outlook has deteriorated. The ChiNext remains very strong, although its strength will consolidate in the near term.

2 March 2020 | BOCOM International: Hao Hong, CFA

Although the trend towards cashless payments is global, the pace, format and depth of coverage differ among jurisdictions. Service providers no longer need to rely on credit card vendors or retail banks, but must face issues of privacy and security.

5 March 2020 | CFA Institute: Alan Lok, CFA; Eunice Chu, ACCA; Guruprasad Jambunathan, CFA, FRM

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For more articles in the series "Understanding Investment Fundamentals", visit the Sector Analysis page.

With 60% of global consumption, the battle over sustainable palm oil will be won or lost in Asia. Read about how investors can drive Asia’s companies to remove deforestation from their supply chains in this brief by the Good Growth Partnership.

3 February 2020 | Good Growth Partnership: Owen Hauck

Low volatility indices have typically outperformed their underlying benchmarks on an absolute and a risk-adjusted basis. The low-volatility anomaly is universal: this observation applies over multiple time horizons, geographies, and market segments.

24 January 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Phillip Brzenk, Tianyin Cheng, Smita Chirputkar, Hamish Preston, Izzy Wang

The rise of smartphone usage and low-cost, high-speed mobile bandwidth has led to enormous growth of mobile games. The business is fast-paced, requiring agility and short build cycles, but also allows the passive collection of large amounts of data.

5 March 2020 | CFA Institute: Alan Lok, CFA, Eunice Chu, ACCA, Guruprasad Jambunathan, FRM, Chan Fook Leong, CFA

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For more articles in the series "Understanding Investment Fundamentals", visit the Sector Analysis page.

China’s demand for cars will shrink in the short term due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Factories need time to resume operations. The downturn in the car manufacturing industry will continue to affect the companies' credit profiles.

26 February 2020 | Pengyuan International: Danny Chen, Tian Shan, Zhang Weiya

The suspension of property sales in China will pressure developers’ liquidity in the short term and squeeze their profitability in the medium term. Their credit profiles will diverge, with small developers seeing their credit profiles deteriorate. 

26 February 2020 | Pengyuan International: Winnie Guo, Xinping Lin, Simon Lee

The full-year impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on China’s economy may be determined by the country’s economic activity in March. An analysis of three possible scenarios informs the views on individual corporate sectors for the remainder of the year.

26 February 2020 | Pengyuan International: Tony Tang, Stanley Tsai, Ke Chen

The European Union’s new classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities, aka the EU Taxonomy, sets out criteria for what constitutes green investing. Japanese asset managers discuss how they can use it to explain their approach to ESG to clients.

23 February 2020 | Chie Mitsui

S&P Indices versus Active (SPIVA) scorecards are semiannual scorecards published by S&P Dow Jones Indices that compare the performance of active equity and fixed income mutual funds against their benchmarks over a number of time horizons.

19 February 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices

Factor portfolio construction typically focuses on selecting stocks with desirable factor characteristics. An alternative approach — tilting — achieves desired increases in factor exposure while maintaining appropriate levels of diversification.

19 February 2020 | FTSE Russell: Andy Dougan

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This publication has been assigned 1 Continuing Education (CE) credit under the guidelines of the CFA Institute Continuing Education Program. We encourage CFA Institute members to login to the CE tracking tool to self-document these credits. You can find more CE content in the Continuing Education section of ARX.

Companies’ financial reports are often deemed to be opaque and difficult to digest, deepening information frictions and impairing stock liquidity. What role does litigation risk play in the clarity and readability of financial reports?

Winner of the CFA Institute ARX Best Paper Award at the 24th Annual New Zealand Finance Colloquium held on 13-14 February 2020 at Auckland University of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand. 

18 February 2020 | Mark Humphery-Jenner, Yun Liu, Vikram Nanda, Sabatino Silveri, Minxing Sun

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This publication has been assigned 1 Continuing Education (CE) credit under the guidelines of the CFA Institute Continuing Education Program. We encourage CFA Institute members to login to the CE tracking tool to self-document these credits. You can find more CE content in the Continuing Education section of ARX.

The economic and market impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus may be much larger than those of the 2003 SARS virus. Why? China is a much bigger part of the global economy than it was 17 years ago.

12 February 2020 | MSCI: Zhen Wei, Jun Wang, Thomas Verbraken

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This publication has been assigned 0.5 Continuing Education (CE) credits under the guidelines of the CFA Institute Continuing Education Program. We encourage CFA Institute members to login to the CE tracking tool to self-document these credits. You can find more CE content in the Continuing Education section of ARX.

ESG themes are long-term, but some can emerge with sudden force. Five trends are expected to unfold in 2020: climate change innovation, new terms of capital, re-valuing real estate, transforming workforce, and accountability to new stakeholders.

13 January 2020 | MSCI ESG Research LLC: Linda-Eling Lee, Meggin Thwing-Eastman, Ric Marshall

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This publication has been assigned 1 Continuing Education (CE) credit under the guidelines of the CFA Institute Continuing Education Program. We encourage CFA Institute members to login to the CE tracking tool to self-document these credits. You can find more CE content in the Continuing Education section of ARX.

Commodities historically have been used for diversification and inflation protection. But they can also be used as building blocks to express investment themes, as tactical trading tools, and as a component of a multi-asset risk premia allocation.

5 February 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Fiona Boal, Jim Wiederhold

The global sukuk market has enjoyed tremendous growth since 2013, with a compound annualized growth rate of nearly 18%, driven by increased issuance from sovereigns and supranationals and strong investor demand for Shariah-compliant securities.

5 February 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Jason Giordano

The paper takes an objective look at the China A-share market, and with global markets as a reference, attempts to assess the viability and potential challenges of deploying quantitative strategies in China's local market.

5 February 2020 | Eastspring Investments: Ben Dunn, Jie Lu

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This publication has been assigned 1 Continuing Education (CE) credit under the guidelines of the CFA Institute Continuing Education Program. We encourage CFA Institute members to login to the CE tracking tool to self-document these credits. You can find more CE content in the Continuing Education section of ARX.

In December 2019, the Japan Financial Services Authority (FSA), published a revised draft of Japan's Stewardship Code. CFA Society Japan and CFA Institute conducted a survey of Japan’s investment professionals to gauge their views on the revision.

4 February 2020 | CFA Society Japan, CFA Institute

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Although Islamic finance and sustainable, responsible, and impact (SRI) investing appear unrelated, they share key similarities. Emerging trends may enable financial services providers to develop products that satisfy criteria of both approaches.

3 February 2020 | CFA Institute: Usman Hayat, CFA

Indonesia plans to expand its green infrastructure to achieve positive environmental and economic benefits. The four key sectors are: renewable energy, low-carbon transport, sustainable water management, and sustainable waste management.

1 February 2020 | Climate Bonds Initiative: Kristiane Davidson, Monica Filkova, Nabilla Gunawan, Amanda Giorgi

China’s economy is shifting focus from investment and manufacturing to consumption and services. This paper analyzes China’s growing economic sectors and examines their equity, fundamental, and price performance characteristics.

29 January 2020 | S&P Dow Jones Indices: Liyu Zeng, Priscilla Luk, Sun Yan

A report on travel-tech in Southeast Asia illustrates the landscape, analyses the trends, and highlights opportunities of investing into early-stage travel-tech companies. It points towards a convergence between travel industry and other sectors.

16 January 2020 | Vynn Capital: Victor Chua Kok Hoe, Shivan Bhavnani

A study of fluctuations in buyers’ attention to the housing market and their effects on home sales shows that buyers respond positively to price growth. They search more extensively, cover a broader range of locations and property characteristics.

Winner of the ARX-sponsored best paper award at the Finance, Property, Technology, and the Economy Conference, organised by the University of South Australia Business School, held in Adelaide, Australia, on 2–3 December 2019.

29 October 2019 | Antonio Gargano, Marco Giacoletti, Elvis Jarnecic

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing is increasingly gaining attention in Korea as such investments are expanding internationally. Korean institutional investors are less active in utilizing ESG investing principles than foreign institutional investors. Stronger means are needed to induce Korean institutional investors to move beyond short-term-oriented perspectives and embrace ESG investing.

9 January 2020 | Ick Jin

A series of papers in which the International Valuation Standards Council explores whether goodwill is economically a wasting asset, and if so, if the life and implicit decline in value can be reasonably estimated and supported.

8 January 2020 | International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC), Kevin Prall

Part 1: Is Goodwill a Wasting Asset? >

Part 2: Information Value of the Impairment Test >

Proprietary desk is an emerging area in investment management offering enormous career opportunities for budding professionals. Its mandate is to invest money from a company’s own balance sheet and generate an absolute return from the equity market that should be better than the return from fixed-income instruments

28 November 2019 | Biswarup Mohapatra, CFA, Biharilal Deora, CFA, CIPM | 1 CE | Video: 1 hr 5 min

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For more "Career Insights" webinars, visit the Webinars section or browse ARX posts under Research.

Passive strategies have been attracting a large pool of investors who want to generate market returns at a relatively lower cost. However, in India they have not yet gathered as much momentum. We discuss passive investing approaches that wealth advisers and financial planners could use, and how to use passive strategies to balance an active approach. 

3 October 2019 | Anil Ghelani, CFA, Shreenivas Kunte, CFA, CIPM | 1 CE | Video: 1 hr 9 min

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For more "Practitioners' Insights" webinars, visit the Webinars section or browse ARX posts under Research.