Moving with business cycles, procyclical stocks have been found to yield higher average returns than countercyclical stocks. William Goetzmann and Akiko and Masahiro Watanabe use 50 years of real GDP growth expectations from economists’ surveys to determine forecasted economic states in order to avoid the effects of econometric forecasting model error. The scholars created a
Despite the constant pull on Railpen chief executive Chris Hitchen’s expertise in other directions, most recently helping to run NEST, the UK government’s new low-cost pension scheme, he is resolute that his primary task is ensuring Railpen, inhouse manager of the £19-billion ($30.4 billion) pension scheme for Britain’s rail industry, successfully delivers on its monthly
Endowments and foundations in the United States are more concerned with the US political and fiscal gridlock than the uncertainty caused by the European debt crisis, according to a survey of non-profit organisations by Mercer Hammond. Partner at Mercer Hammond, Russ LaMore, says the US situation dominated the global macroeconomic concerns of these investors, followed
This paper suggests a new specification for leverage aversion, which may better capture the unique risks of leverage. The authors also introduce mean-variance-leverage efficient frontiers, comparing them with conventional mean-variance efficient frontiers. They conclude that leverage aversion can have a large impact on portfolio choice. Leverage aversion, efficient frontiers and the efficient region
The agenda at the United Kingdom’s National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) annual shindig in Liverpool’s Echo Arena on the banks of the Mersey couldn’t have been broader. From early analysis of auto-enrolment, the biggest shake-up of the industry in a generation and just days old, to life expectancy, Britain’s role in the European Union,
The European Union is threatening to drive pension funds out of real estate investments, experts warn. That could be one of the undesirable results of plans to put pension funds under new risk regulations akin to the Solvency II requirements for the continent’s insurers. What most concerns John Forbes, a PriceWaterhouseCoopers real estate expert, is
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