Investment strategies

"It's now June and if you’ve been on a deserted island for the last five months you couldn’t have fathomed the movements we’ve seen," an expert says.

In the months since CEO Larry Fink’s push to focus the firm’s efforts on ESG, the investing landscape has changed more than anyone could have anticipated.

Wild market swings have given many active managers a rare respite after a decade-long battle against the rise of passive investing.

The asset manager plans to leverage Precadian’s ActiveShares product, which requires funds to publish an indicative value of its holdings every second.

Practitioners say it’s too hard to use, too pricey and doesn’t meet the pandemic-economy moment. This, and other findings of our annual research.

Among our findings, advisors are (finally) embracing chatbots and robo advisors.

The results were “not just predicated on expense ratios,” an expert says.

“Just because someone’s charging 1% doesn’t mean you should take them off your list,” an expert says.

As liquidity disappeared amid the coronavirus-sparked mayhem, veteran fixed-income portfolio manager Gemma Wright-Casparius saw opportunities.

Fixed-income ETFs — for the most part — passed their first big test, but it was a roller-coaster ride along the way.

The pandemic has sealed the fate of small, niche offerings that have failed to gain traction.

The purchase comes as active asset managers feel intensifying pressure to bulk up as they face stiff competition from passive and index-tracking funds.

The demand is there but it isn’t easy to pull off, according to one custodian that’s already done it.

Brokers and fund managers are turning to innovation to remain competitive and capture new customers.

Many of the executives selected this year say the industry’s future may lie in its sudden change to a fully virtual business model.

Funds advised by Katie Koch, whose firm has about $1.8 trillion under supervision, are beating their benchmarks at an 80% rate in 2020.

With few corners of the fixed-income industry safe from harm, investors’ faith in managers appears to be intact — for now.

CEO Larry Fink announced a new focus on ESG in January, however the coronavirus has pushed a separate set of urgent issues into the forefront.

“People are just saying, ‘Why should I pay for an active manager when most of them lose to the benchmark anyway?’ This is a big deal,” an expert says.

The fund ditched its tail-risk protection weeks before the coronavirus sent stocks into a tailspin, according to people familiar with its decision.