Buy side Archive

The word trillion has a longer history than you might think. First coined by French mathematical genius Nicolas Chuquet in the 15th century, it refers to the third power of a million – or 1,000,000,000,000. Rarely used until the 1980s, trillion has now become commonplace in financial parlance, as economic growth and inflation have made the numbers we use to measure our world larger. Today, trillion is a widely understood concept, with national economies and even some com...

Investors are bullish on rates, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) fund manager survey for August. The survey highlights that 43 percent of investors surveyed expect lower short-term rates and only 9 percent expect higher long-term rates over the next 12 months. Taken together, this is the most bullish survey view since November 2008. A recession is likely in the next 12 months, according to 34 percent of investors surveyed, while 64 perc...

The global asset management industry has reached a tipping point, warns a new study, stating that last year, after roughly a decade of positive momentum, the industry hit a wall amid concerns over rising interest rates and a turn in the economic cycle. Major asset markets posted negative returns, managers saw outflows, profitability declined and revenue margins contracted, leading in some cases to job cuts, according to the Boston Consulting Group’s study, ‘Glob...

Investors have added risk, rotating into cyclical plays (equities, Europe, industrials, banks) and out of defensive ones (bonds, real estate investment trusts, utilities and staples), according to the latest Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) fund manager survey for July. Allocation to global equities retraces almost all of last month’s dip, rising 31 percentage points to 10 percent overweight, reveals the survey. Looking at regional equity allocations...