Indices, Index Funds And ETFs

Indices, Index Funds And ETFs
Author: Michael I. C. Nwogugu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 710
Release: 2019-03-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 113744701X

Indices, index funds and ETFs are grossly inaccurate and inefficient and affect more than €120 trillion worth of securities, debts and commodities worldwide. This book analyzes the mathematical/statistical biases, misrepresentations, recursiveness, nonlinear risk and homomorphisms inherent in equity, debt, risk-adjusted, options-based, CDS and commodity indices – and by extension, associated index funds and ETFs. The book characterizes the “Popular-Index Ecosystems,” a phenomenon that provides artificial price-support for financial instruments, and can cause systemic risk, financial instability, earnings management and inflation. The book explains why indices and strategic alliances invalidate Third-Generation Prospect Theory (PT3), related approaches and most theories of Intertemporal Asset Pricing. This book introduces three new decision models, and some new types of indices that are more efficient than existing stock/bond indices. The book explains why the Mean-Variance framework, the Put-Call Parity theorem, ICAPM/CAPM, the Sharpe Ratio, Treynor Ratio, Jensen’s Alpha, the Information Ratio, and DEA-Based Performance Measures are wrong. Leveraged/inverse ETFs and synthetic ETFs are misleading and inaccurate and non-legislative methods that reduce index arbitrage and ETF arbitrage are introduced.

Democratizing Money?

Democratizing Money?
Author: Beat Weber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2018-05-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108169120

A lack of confidence in monetary institutions after the recent financial crash has led to a resurgence of public debate on the topic of monetary reform, reaching a level of political prominence unprecedented since the period after the Great Depression. Whether privatizing money with Bitcoin, regionalizing it with regional currencies, or turning it into a state monopoly with either sovereign money or 'Modern Monetary Theory, the only economic utopians able to draw public attention in our post-crash world seem to be monetary reformers. Weber provides the first proper economic analysis of these modern monetary reform proposals, exposing their flaws and fallacies through critical examination. From academics studying the political economy of finance to economic sociologists studying financial institutions, this book will appeal to scholars and students interested in monetary reform proposals and the viability of alternative currency systems, and more broadly, readers seeking a contemporary understanding of what money is and how it works today.

Investing Amid Low Expected Returns

Investing Amid Low Expected Returns
Author: Antti Ilmanen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2022-04-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119860202

Elevate your game in the face of challenging market conditions with this eye-opening guide to portfolio management Investing Amid Low Expected Returns: Making the Most When Markets Offer the Least provides an evidence-based blueprint for successful investing when decades of market tailwinds are turning into headwinds. For a generation, falling yields and soaring asset prices have boosted realized returns. However, this past windfall leaves retirement savers and investors now facing the prospect of record-low future expected returns. Emphasizing this pressing challenge, the book highlights the role that timeless investment practices – discipline, humility, and patience – will play in enabling investment success. It then assesses current investor practices and the body of empirical evidence to illuminate the building blocks for improving long-run returns in today’s environment and beyond. It concludes by reviewing how to put them together through effective portfolio construction, risk management, and cost control practices. In this book, readers will also find: The common investor responses so far to the low expected return challenge Extensive empirical evidence on the critical ingredients of an effective portfolio: major asset class premia, illiquidity premia, style premia, and alpha Discussions of the pros and cons of illiquid investments, factor investing, ESG investing, risk mitigation strategies, and market timing Coverage of the whole top-down investment process – throughout the book endorsing humility in tactical forecasting and boldness in diversification Ideal for institutional and active individual investors, Investing Amid Low Expected Returns is a timeless resource that enables investing with serenity even in harsher financial conditions.

Restoring Forests and Trees for Sustainable Development

Restoring Forests and Trees for Sustainable Development
Author: Pia Katila
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2024
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0197683924

Restoring Forests and Trees for Sustainable Development utilizes a multidisciplinary perspective to analyze and discuss the various opportunities and challenges of restoring tree and forest cover. It examines forest restoration commitments, policies and programs, their implementation at different scales and contexts, and how forest restoration helps to mitigate environmental, societal, and cultural challenges. This book explores how restoration affects forest ecosystem services, contributes to biodiversity conservation, and generates benefits and synergies, while recognizing the considerable costs, tradeoffs, and variable feasibility of its implementation.

Values at Work

Values at Work
Author: Daniel C. Esty
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3030556131

Sustainable investing is a rapidly growing and evolving field. With investors expressing ever greater interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics and reporting, companies face a sustainability imperative and the need to remake their business models to respond to an array of pressing issues including climate change, air and water pollution, racial justice, workplace diversity, economic inequality, privacy, corporate integrity, and good governance. From equities to fixed income and from private equity to impact-investing, investors of all kinds now want to understand which companies will be marketplace leaders in a business future redefined by sustainability. Thus, investment strategies, risk models, financial vehicles, applications, data, metrics, standards, and regulations are all changing rapidly around the world. In an effort to better understand the current status and movement of this dynamic field and to provide a practical reference for the growing pool of investors, financial advisors, companies, and academics seeking information on sustainable investing and ESG reporting, this edited book covers the latest trends, tools, and thinking. It showcases the work of authors from leading companies and academic institutions across a range of vital topics such as financial disclosure, portfolio assessment, ESG metrics construction, and law as well as regulation. Readers of the book will be better able to identify and address the hurdles to moving mainstream capital toward more sustainable companies, investments, and projects.

The Cost of Capital

The Cost of Capital
Author: Cleveland S. Patterson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1995-04-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0313035717

Knowledge about the magnitude of the cost of capital invested in an asset and its determinants is essential for the analysis of corporate investment decisions and for assessing profitability. This book provides a clear conceptual understanding of the cost of capital, the characteristics of an asset that influence it, and a critical, comprehensive, and up-to-date evaluation of practical means for estimating its magnitude. It is intended primarily for use by professional managers, but will also be valuable to future managers in advanced capital budgeting courses. The focus of the discussion is on estimation methods that are theoretically sound and consistent with a corporate goal of value creation. Three methods are analyzed in depth: the discounted cash flow model, the capital asset pricing model, and arbitrage pricing theory. For each method, the basic theory is set out in a nontechnical manner and empirical evidence in support of the model is critically reviewed. The bulk of the discussion then focuses on practical means for implementing the methods for decision-making purposes. Later chapters focus on the effects of the debt-supporting characteristics of assets, on the valuation of options embedded in securities, and on the estimation of the cost of capital for evaluating international investments. The final chapter discusses certain aspects of the use of cost of capital in public utility regulation. Care is taken to separate out key issues from more peripheral material through a comprehensive set of supplementary notes.

Handbook Of Global Financial Markets: Transformations, Dependence, And Risk Spillovers

Handbook Of Global Financial Markets: Transformations, Dependence, And Risk Spillovers
Author: Sabri Boubaker
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 828
Release: 2019-06-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9813236663

The objective of this handbook is to provide the readers with insights about current dynamics and future potential transformations of global financial markets. We intend to focus on four main areas: Dynamics of Financial Markets; Financial Uncertainty and Volatility; Market Linkages and Spillover Effects; and Extreme Events and Financial Transformations and address the following critical issues, but not limited to: market integration and its implications; crisis risk assessment and contagion effects; financial uncertainty and volatility; role of emerging financial markets in the global economy; role of complex dynamics of economic and financial systems; market linkages, asset valuation and risk management; exchange rate volatility and firm-level exposure; financial effects of economic, political and social risks; link between financial development and economic growth; country risks; and sovereign debt markets.

Real Estate Risk in Equity Returns

Real Estate Risk in Equity Returns
Author: Gaston Michel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2009-08-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3834994960

Gaston Michel investigates whether shocks to real estate markets constitute an important source of the risk that is priced in the cross section of equity returns. His results document that real estate risk explains a large part of the cross-sectional variation in equity returns. He shows that an alternative modeI which includes the real estate factor performs as well as or better than the Fama-French model in pricing equity returns.

Capital Markets and Institutions

Capital Markets and Institutions
Author: Linda Allen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 804
Release: 1997-01-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0471130494

Intended for Junior/Senior/MBA course in Financial Markets, Capital Markets and Institutions. Using an international focus, this text integrates the financial markets with the activities of financial intermediaries. This approach enables students to understand the role of financial intermediaries in the development of financial markets. Throughout the text, the emphasis is on "how things are done on the street." The origins, major participants, pricing and settlements and typical transactions for all financial markets are also included.

TAIL RISK HEDGING: Creating Robust Portfolios for Volatile Markets

TAIL RISK HEDGING: Creating Robust Portfolios for Volatile Markets
Author: Vineer Bhansali
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-12-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0071791760

"TAIL RISKS" originate from the failure of mean reversion and the idealized bell curve of asset returns, which assumes that highly probable outcomes occur near the center of the curve and that unlikely occurrences, good and bad, happen rarely, if at all, at either "tail" of the curve. Ever since the global financial crisis, protecting investments against these severe tail events has become a priority for investors and money managers, but it is something Vineer Bhansali and his team at PIMCO have been doing for over a decade. In one of the first comprehensive and rigorous books ever written on tail risk hedging, he lays out a systematic approach to protecting portfolios from, and potentially benefiting from, rare yet severe market outcomes. Tail Risk Hedging is built on the author's practical experience applying macroeconomic forecasting and quantitative modeling techniques across asset markets. Using empirical data and charts, he explains the consequences of diversification failure in tail events and how to manage portfolios when this happens. He provides an easy-to-use, yet rigorous framework for protecting investment portfolios against tail risk and using tail hedging to play offense. Tail Risk Hedging explores how to: Generate profits from volatility and illiquidity during tail-risk events in equity and credit markets Buy attractively priced tail hedges that add value to a portfolio and quantify basis risk Interpret the psychology of investors in option pricing and portfolio construction Customize explicit hedges for retirement investments Hedge risk factors such as duration risk and inflation risk Managing tail risk is today's most significant development in risk management, and this thorough guide helps you access every aspect of it. With the time-tested and mathematically rigorous strategies described here, including pieces of computer code, you get access to insights to help mitigate portfolio losses in significant downturns, create explosive liquidity while unhedged participants are forced to sell, and create more aggressive yet tail-risk-focused portfolios. The book also gives you a unique, higher level view of how tail risk is related to investing in alternatives, and of derivatives such as zerocost collars and variance swaps. Volatility and tail risks are here to stay, and so should your clients' wealth when you use Tail Risk Hedging for managing portfolios. PRAISE FOR TAIL RISK HEDGING: "Managing, mitigating, and even exploiting the risk of bad times are the most important concerns in investments. Bhansali puts tail risk hedging and tail risk management under a microscope--pricing, implementation, and showing how we can fine-tune our risk exposures, which are all crucial ways in how we can better weather our bad times." -- ANDREW ANG, Ann F. Kaplan Professor of Business at Columbia University "This book is critical and accessible reading for fiduciaries, financial consultants and investors interested in both theoretical foundations and practical considerations for how to frame hedging downside risk in portfolios. It is a tremendous resource for anyone involved in asset allocation today." -- CHRISTOPHER C. GECZY, Ph.D., Academic Director, Wharton Wealth Management Initiative and Adj. Associate Professor of Finance, The Wharton School "Bhansali's book demonstrates how tail risk hedging can work, be concretely implemented, and lead to higher returns so that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too! A must read for the savvy investor." -- DIDIER SORNETTE, Professor on the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks, ETH Zurich