MandG

Best Blogs of the Week #275

Posted by Anu Heda on Aug 21, 2017, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , ,

Formats matter in blog posts. This week I highlight three important blog components. Not shockingly, high-quality posts have:

  1. an excellent title
  2. at least 1 compelling or different graphic
  3. high-quality, concise writing

 

Best title comes from…

… Aberdeen for “Week in review: White House meltdown”

A compelling chart from …

… M&G for “Be wary of our obsession with anniversaries”

formats

High-quality writing comes from …

… Invesco for “Global fixed income: What market threats lie ahead?” with this

  • The good: The synchronized global cyclical upswing will likely continue, in our view. This would mean good growth with inflation generally below major central banks’ targets — a situation that would encourage policy normalization but without too much tightening.
  • The bad: In the longer term, however, the trends don’t look as positive. Adverse demographics and low productivity growth are likely to restrict economic growth prospects in developed and emerging markets.
  • The ugly: Key political and policy threats in the US, Europe and China represent downside risks to the current cyclical upswing.

 

Outlooks

2017 Outlooks are like Snowflakes

Posted by Anu Heda on Jan 16, 2017, in Best Blogs of the Week, Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

The industry’s blogs are currently awash in two post types: the year in review (2016) and outlooks (for 2017). I reviewed a dozen (list here; PDF) 2017 outlooks posted over the last four weeks. No two posts are alike. The lack of any standardization in tone, length, and type of prediction is informative in its own right. For a time-strapped FA, I can clearly see why he/she may gravitate to same 2 – 3 firms known from years past.

Three interesting takeaways about outlooks:

  1. There’s nearly no overlap across firms. I expected to see significant topical commonality, such as 50%+ offering an end-of-year target for the S&P 500. Not the case.
  2. Two firms use “2017 Outlook” in the post’s title and offer no predictions. I think the typical reader sees that title and expects some amount of prognostication.
  3. Many firms do not provide clear predictions and include a tremendous volume of “may see” and “could occur” woven into the text. This may be compliance related for some firms, though others (e.g., AB, BlackRock) are comfortable with their investment professionals writing predictions.

Across the 12 firms, I counted 28 predictions (my threshold: need a definitive statement or graphic related to a 2017 prediction). The BlackRock post had the most (6) and the average was 2.3 predictions/post. In case you’re curious of some differences, here are four examples how firms provide predictions.

AB – Says it with a chart. (chart too large to include)

American Century – Casts winners and losers. “And the Potential Winners Are… Regional banks with commercial loan exposure could benefit from rising inflation expectations and a steeper yield curve.”

M & G – Makes it relative to a geography or asset class. “Brazil will not be the outperformer in 2017 as existing valuations are priced for a perfect execution of policy.”

TIAA – Uses Straight-talk and blunt languge. “The rise in the U.S. dollar pauses even if rates move higher.”

Best Blogs of the Week #250

Posted by Anu Heda on Nov 14, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , , ,

POTUS 45. There’s not much for me to say that hasn’t been written all over the Internet. From reading 50+ blog posts related to the election, I can affirm asset managers tread lightly with opinion. Asset managers are more comfortable with sharing the news. With that in mind, four excellent posts.POTUS

Loomis Sayles – A Trump White House: Potential Market Impacts of the US Election – Trump’s proposals are structurally inflationary, but which measures will get passed and implemented is a large unknown.

M&G – President-elect Trump. 5 predictions on what happens next in the global economy and markets – Trump may not build a wall. But even if he does, it won’t keep the robots out.

Putnam – What we might expect with a Trump administration agenda – Trump does not have any specific plans to change Social Security or Medicare. He opposes any increase in the retirement age and would oppose raising the wage base for the Social Security payroll tax.

Russell – U.S. elections 2016: Trump wins White House. Markets react. – So we don’t see this election as having a lasting impact on markets.

3 Practices to Improve Your Firm’s Blog Posts

Posted by Anu Heda on Oct 18, 2016, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

For the last five years, I’ve tracked the industry’s blog posts and seen tremendous growth. Growth in number of firms, frequency of posts, and quality per post. In the quality dimension, many aspects of individual posts taken for granted now were absent five years ago. For example, these four details were not commonplace:

Authors’ names (many posts were published by “admin” or “asset manager”)

Charts, graphs and data tables (many posts were 500+ words of straight text)

Links to related thought leadership

A clear conclusion

QualityFrom reading hundreds of industry blog posts, I want to share three favorite practices.

  1. Include a “Bottom line.” Too many times, authors post 500+ word entries without a highlighted point of view or logical next step. A bottom line reiterates a single idea to take away.
  2. Add only relevant and simple charts. Many posts include unnecessarily complex charts. Each week, I come across a chart with multiple vertical axes, and data in both line and bar chart form. If the post’s point is so complex it requires such a difficult chart, perhaps a whitepaper is a better format.
  3. Use a precise question as the title. Of the three, this practice is changing the most quickly in 2016. Still, we see posts titled “Q2 Bond Update” or “Views from Asia.” Titles like this often undersell the quality within. Title-as-question is not preferred for all posts, yet many posts could benefit from this format.

I imagine in 5 years’ time these will be commonplace across the industry.

which way?

Best Blogs of the Week #239

Posted by Anu Heda on Jul 25, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , ,

Only one pure best post this week and it touches on the recent fixed income news from Germany.

M & G – Why do people buy negative yielding bonds? – The possibility of selling the asset to someone else at a higher price (a greater fool) is predicated on hoping that having accepted a guaranteed loss of over 50 cents over the course of 10 years, someone else will be willing to accept an even greater guaranteed loss over a shorter time period at some stage in the next 10 years.

M & G Blog Post

There have numerous posts related to post-BREXIT. Without summarizing all of them, here are the two I found compelling.