The nascent market for green bonds saw a growth spurt in 2014 with issuance tripling from a year earlier, surpassing $38 billion. The growth in green bonds comes amid greater awareness of climate change and expanding investor appetite for environmentally-aware investment products. The prevalence of these securities is likely to rise as they allow issuers and investors alike to demonstrate their commitment to environmentally focused initiatives.
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The stock market abounds with colorful sayings that reflect the collective wisdom of decades of investment experience. For professional investors, these time-worn adages are reminders of sometimes-painful past market episodes and the unending challenge of getting the future right. But at the end of the day, can these slogans actually be useful in making investment decisions? Yes, but the best investment strategy is one that incorporates reasonable expectations for future market returns and establishes guardrails to avoid being swept up by the emotion that inhibits investment success.
Nearly all investment professionals rely upon portfolio optimization techniques grounded in Modern Portfolio Theory to structure investment portfolios for individual investors. Using statistical techniques and computer-assisted modeling, investment advisers are able to combine different types of assets such as stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, and hedge funds to create portfolios that claim to offer the best possible return for specified level of risk, or to minimize the amount of risk an investor must assume to achieve a specified amount of return.
Although the future is unpredictable, we do know that financial planning can allow families and their advisors to operate from a position of strength and resilience, no matter the changes that lie ahead. In this video, the Baird economic analysts and financial planning specialists look at how the economic landscape impact your finances in 2021 while highlighting wealth planning opportunities to consider.
Investors shouldn't let taxes prevent them from choosing better investment options. Transitioning to a tax-managed SMA may help minimize upfront tax cost and provide opportunities over time to reduce tracking error against a preferred benchmark. The combination of this tax efficiency, along with ongoing tax management, allows investors with different tax and investment situations to more readily achieve their near-term and long-term asset allocation and investment goals.
When an off-the-shelf solution doesn’t cut it, responsible investors can turn to customized separately managed accounts (SMAs) to build portfolios that align with their values, including expressing their individual ESG views. With an SMA, investors can also gain the market exposure they’re seeking through portfolio construction, active ownership, or a combination of the two.
Investors look to the municipal market for both quality and diversification. They were rewarded in 2020 when the municipal market proved resilient despite a challenging economic environment. The strength of the municipal credit quality surprised many. And the CARES Act provided much-needed support to a municipal bond market reeling from COVID-19. What’s coming next now that the Biden administration is setting to work?
Inflation is almost always a topic of discussion when thinking about and planning for the future. This paper explores the many factors that affect the inflation rate, whether an uptick in inflation is helpful or harmful, and the cyclical forces that could push toward higher inflation. Despite all the theory and prognostication, no one knows exactly where inflation is headed.
Many trends—including the explosive price changes in a handful of equities driven by a crowdsourced short squeeze—are indicative of an asset bubble. Grizzled market veterans are starting to draw comparisons with the go-go market of the late 1990s that ended with the tech bubble bursting in 2000. That thought leads many to conclude that the U.S. equity market is in a liquidity-driven bubble that again may not end well for investors.
Using equities to customize for yield enhancement isn’t a completely new invention. Investors have had access to a variety of dividend-focused strategies for years. For investors who are less familiar with the ways they can tailor their portfolios for yield enhancements, there are two key approaches around factors and options that can be used.