Economists hate price and wages controls. They distort the natural forces of markets and usually result in pent-up demand and/or supply which will be unleashed at a later stage as well as a range of unexpected distortions. Investors, too, should hate them. (more…)
This paper by Columbia University’s Ulf Nielsson, empricially investigates the effects of stock exchange consolidation, specifically measuring how it affects stock liquidity and how the effect varies with firm type.
Institutional investors’ increasing use of factor-based models to understand their portfolio risk exposures is the conduit for Russell Investments’ collaboration with Axioma to launch a series of factor-based indexes to rival MSCI/Barra, according to Rolf Agather, managing director of research and innovation at Russell. 
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Diversification alone is not enough to manage downside risk, rather academic research in dynamic portfolio theory suggests the three complementary techniques of diversification, hedging, and insurance can be used together to design customised investment solutions, that ultimately separate assets into performance seeking portfolios and liability hedging portfolios, according to EDHEC’s Felix Goltz and Stoyan Stoyanov. 
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CalPERS will introduce a new leadership organisation design next year, which includes for the first time a dedicated chief financial officer function coordinating all corporate finance functions including cash flow.
Thomas P DiNapoli was given a little scare in the recent US mid-term elections but, in the end, was returned fairly comfortably to his position of New York State Comptroller and sole trustee of the New York State pension fund. What happens next, though, may be more interesting. 
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