An ancient Greek philosopher named Heraclitus is said to have coined the phrase “The only thing that is constant is change.” Roughly 2,500 years later and these words ring truer than ever. In the world of asset management, it’s crucial that firms have a grasp on where things are heading so they can remain competitive, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to predict the direction in which things might go.
Recently, the Trump Administration introduced trade barriers on the imports of washing machines and solar products. This move was based on a World Trade Organization rule that allows countries to re-introduce trade barriers in cases where evidence clearly suggests that “a domestic industry is injured or threatened with injury caused by a surge in imports.”
The explosive growth in the value of cryptocurrencies has led to overnight billionaires. As many of these cryptocurrencies have seen 10-fold growth and more, the general public is drawn to invest in unregulated cryptocurrencies. Professional traders, along with state and federal regulators, warn investors that they are purchasing unregistered securities on exchanges.
Many people are in a veritable state of hysteria following the Federal Communications Commission vote on Chairman Ajit Pai’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” (RIF) order. It’s a nasty state of affairs, and it’s one unfortunately driven by a lot of false rhetoric and outright fearmongering over how policy is actually changing. Telling people that a policy change will “end the internet as we know it” or “kill the internet” can agitate troubled people into doing crazy things.
Quantitative easing was bullish. On this, you have had the assurances of former Federal Reserve Chair Ben S. Bernanke as well as the ocular evidence of rising stock prices, falling commercial real-estate cap rates and tightening credit spreads.
How ironic. Bloomberg is reporting that most of the new quant strategies adopted by asset managers aren’t generating any, uh, quantifiable positive returns, let alone alpha. Allow me to explain in a moment of schadenfreude.
For years, environmentalists have blasted “climate science deniers” for refusing to accept the evidence for human-caused global warming. But what about economic-science deniers?
On June 1, the day that President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, everyone from CNN panelists to the local bartender self-appointed themselves as experts on environmental economics and international climate policy.
On Dec. 19, 2016, after years of mounting stress due to investor redemptions, key staff of Platinum Partners were arrested and its funds were placed into liquidation. Prior to this, many believed Platinum Partners had about $1.7 billion in assets under management and a stellar track record; this is now unclear.
