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Best Blogs of the Week #232

Posted by Anu Heda on Jun 06, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with ,

Two posts this week to review. Both posts discuss an investing topic; one related to timing and the other to an asset class.

Invesco – Are there ‘good months’ and ‘bad months’ to invest? – In 2008, at the depth of the global financial crisis, equity investors fled for the exits, but it wasn’t until 2013 that investors put meaningful amounts of capital back into the stock market. As a result, many of them missed the market’s turnaround, which started in 2009, and bought back in after stocks had risen. (In other words, they sold low and bought higher).

WisdomTree – Global Small-Cap Dividends Crushing It in 2016 – The real question, of course, is how this happened, with a secondary issue focusing on the potential robustness of those drivers looking into the future.

WisdomeTree Attribution

Best Blogs of the Week #231

Posted by Anu Heda on May 31, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , ,

Three posts make it into this week’s industry review. I’m noticing a trend across investment-oriented blog posts: stay invested in the equity market. There’s broad consensus across PM teams within asset managers to remain in equities and that no sharp decline looms. Time will tell.

AB – Dizzy over Dividends – US companies that offer high dividends are very popular among equity investors today. Shares of these companies are trading near record high valuations…

PIMCO – How to Play the Brexit Blues – Although our base case is that the UK votes to remain, we devote much time to thinking about the implications of a vote to leave. Of the two competing views on this ‒ that it will be a globally systemic event or that, while important for the UK, its impact on global markets will be contained ‒ we side with the latter.

WisdomTree – Increasing Net Buybacks with a Quality Approach –  Assuming no growth and no change in valuations going forward, an investor could expect to earn the combined dividend and net buyback yield, currently higher than the zero some prognosticators are predicting.

WisdomTree. Invested.

 

Targeting (the Parents of) Millennials

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on May 18, 2016, in Thoughts , tagged with ,

I’ve argued in the past that the asset management industry is overrating the importance of Millennials. While Millennials rank among the most consistent topics of discussion in our work, a senior distribution executive at a client of ours recently framed the issue of engaging them as concisely and, even better, humorously, as anyone I’ve heard.

In talking about the potential value of addressing Millennials, he said:

You know who firms like us need to focus on? Me! I’m 51 and it’s me and my generation who are going to be inheriting wealth. I haven’t inherited anything yet. Forget about my 20-something kids, I’m the target!

We can cite research that the bulk of the wealth transfer to Millennials is more than 15 years away from starting, or that the transfer will be highly concentrated among just a small percentage of that generation.

But sometimes a good anecdotal zinger is all you need to have an interesting conversation.

[ image credit: Optician Training ]

Best Blogs of the Week #230

Posted by Anu Heda on May 16, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with

Three posts this week headlined by a succinct BlackRock view on factor investing.

BlackRock – 3 things you should know about factor investing – Factor strategies like smart beta capitalize on today’s advancements in data and technology to give all investors access to time-tested investment ideas, once only accessible to large institutions.

Invesco – Despite political turmoil, there are still bright spots in Brazil – Brazil had a massive sell-off last year, but has been a top performer year-to-date. Overall, the Brazilian market is trading at 12 times forward earnings, which seems expensive to us, considering that its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio is 10 times

Loomis Sayles – Green Shoots in China Promising – the rest of the world is largely leveraged to ‘old China’ via heavy industry and construction. And on that front, lending to corporates was soft in March and the People’s Bank of China survey of industrial enterprises suggests an ongoing sluggish outlook.