In an ever-evolving investment landscape, the success of active managers extends beyond traditional fundamentals and analyst outlooks. Macro and geopolitical risks have taken center stage, transforming manager evaluation and portfolio construction.
The graveyard of once legendary business franchises has just added one more new member to its ignominious fraternity. The hastily arranged acquisition of Credit Suisse by its chief Swiss rival UBS in March 2023, ended the 166-year run of the global symbol of Swiss banking largesse. Credit Suisse was once the 15th largest bank in the world with offices in 50 countries and assets of over $1 trillion USD.
US equities were generally higher in the first quarter of 2023, but intra-quarter performance was mixed. The S&P 500 gained for a second straight quarter and got off to a strong start with over 6% returns in January, its best January since 2019.
For fixed income markets, volatility remains the recurring theme across fixed income markets. We have discussed this for more than a year, and we are once again left to contemplate volatility around the market direction narrative versus realized volatility in fixed income markets.
Extend Xponance’s long track record of sourcing, supporting and seeding Diverse & Emerging Managers to the private markets. We seek to partner with GPs that manage alternative asset strategies across multiple fund types
We delve into this opportunity by dissecting the fundamental differences between large and small-cap indices to see if this appears to be a buying opportunity or a fair repricing given the current environment.
The investment ocean is roiling. The steady ship of 60/40 had its worst year in a generation and many investors are left feeling either adrift in the storm or run aground on a deserted isle.
As we move forward into 2023, what happens in financial markets will be determined by the interplay of two primary factors – inflation and economic growth.
For each of the first three quarters of 2022, we spent the opening paragraph of this piece finding new and interesting ways to describe just how bad fixed income performance was, across all sectors and tenors. Yet despite capping one of the worst years for fixed income historically, 4Q22 managed to provide positive total and excess returns.
This post explores the reasons behind the growing popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), the opportunities that are available in using these techniques for ESG investing and the challenges encountered in using them.
While it is intuitively easy to understand that quality companies outperform in the long run, factors that fall in the Quality category often get less attention than the more popular Value and Growth factors. As we head into a slowing economy and possibly a recession amidst an inflationary environment, quality factors once again deserve the attention of investors.
Philadelphia, October 17, 2022 – Xponance, Inc., a multi-strategy investment firm, announced today that Michael A.B. Orr has joined the firm as Managing Director & Chief Investment Officer of the firm’s Alternatives subsidiary, Xponance Alts Solutions, LLC (“XAlts”).
Three quarters of 2022 are in the books, and it is certainly three quarters fixed income investors would all like to forget. As has become our custom, we present a Market Scorecard to document what has occurred across fixed income markets. The numbers are breathtakingly bad and putting them (once again) in a historical context, the bond vigilantes have delivered on the worst three quarter stretch (for some sectors) ever. The broad corporate market, for example, has seen its worst three quarters in succession since inception of modern corporate indices. The same can be said for the broad US Treasury market. At this point, however, we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Geopolitical uncertainty, war, and commodity price shocks have been the headline talking points for the industry in 2022. These certainly contributed to the current stagflationary pressures in the market, however, …
As I write this research note, (October 13, 2022) annual core inflation has hit a 40-year high at 6.6% from a year ago (8.2% for overall inflation), guaranteeing another punishing rate hike by the FOMC. Market commentators are prognosticating about …
Equity markets fell sharply for a third straight quarter in Q3, 2022. The big story for the quarter was the tightening of financial conditions driven by expectations for a more aggressive global rate hike cycle.
With the growing popularity of ESG and the incorporation of ESG metrics in various investment strategies, the debate on whether ESG is a source of alpha or not continues.
It’s not just Cardi B. asking the question! Economists, investors, CEOs of some of the country’s top companies and many in the general public are also worried that the economy is on the verge of recession. Plunging consumer and business confidence, contracting real incomes, and a peak in housing activity all point to a significant weakening in growth, even if the labor market remains healthy.
Since the initial resolution of the European Sovereign debt crisis in 2012, many boutique managers have rated Eurozone equities as a particularly attractive risk/reward opportunity. The initial premise was related to profit normalization. Compared to their European counterparts, the Fed and U.S. government reacted faster and more aggressively to the Great Financial Crisis.
The second quarter of 2022 saw equity markets finish lower for a second straight quarter. The decline in the S&P 500 in the first half of 2022 has been the largest since 1970. Inflation concerns were the biggest drag on risk sentiment in the second quarter.
We open another quarterly commentary with a discussion of just how bad the quarter was for fixed income markets. At the same time, however, a host of metrics suggest that many fixed income valuations are as attractive as they have been in several years. While we think caution and patience are the operative words in the spread sectors, we note some extreme dollar price drops given the movement in both rates and risk premia over the course of 2022.
Q1 2022 saw the largest one quarter outperformance of international value in twenty years, and yet 93% of international value managers underperformed the international value benchmark.1 While the disruption of commodity markets from the invasion of Ukraine led to outsized returns in commodity sensitive stocks …
There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen. The last three years and particularly the weeks since February 24th have coughed up more so-called ‘tail-risk’ events than the entire pre-pandemic decade!
