Investment Innovation – Brought to you by Franklin Templeton
ESG data provider, Fair Supply Analytics, has produced technology that maps the impact of COVID-19 on global supply chains, and can be used by investors to measure their investment portfolios exposure to the sectors and countries most effected.
Markets in disarray are where long-term investors make money. Investors that perform the best over the long term will have taken calculated and deliberate risks and put money to work during crises like this one. But how? Focusing Capital on the Long Term CEO and research director discuss.
There is a 70 per cent chance a recession will occur in the next six months according to a new index measuring the state of the economy that uses a statistical method first applied to analysing human skulls.
There is a contradiction in the way that many long-horizon asset owners behave. On one hand, they are increasingly concerned about the externalities imposed on wider society by the companies they own. But on the other, they tend to ignore the social costs imposed by the short-horizon strategies that they employ such as momentum and tracking error constraints. The transmission mechanism for this social cost is via asset mispricing, which leads to capital misallocation and incentives for CEOs to focus on short-term share price maximisation.
The choice of benchmarks is one of the most fundamental decisions that investors make, but the time and respect it gets in the investment process is under-valued according to CIO of Verus Investments, Ian Toner, who explains why investors should care more about benchmark selection.
Two of the United Kingdom’s largest pension funds have launched a guide to cyber risk for asset owners highlighting key cyber dangers asset owners should watch, and rules of engagement with investee companies and reticent asset managers.
David Villa, CIO of the $110 billion State of Wisconsin Investment Board is worried about the outlook for returns. As a result he’s significantly underweight sovereign bonds in favour of cash. But he’s also positioning the organisation to do better analytics for more complicated portfolios, another result of a low return environment. The fund is working on at least five data and technology projects and has hired a chief technology and operations officer.
Innovation is more important than ever given the uncertain and ambiguous times that lie ahead for institutional investors like climate change, political dysfunction and poor returns. “Returns can only come from an ecosystem that works and we need innovation to do this,” said Roger Urwin, global head of investment content, Willis Towers Watson speaking at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Cambridge University.
