With a new U.S. Administration having taken office in January, the financial markets seem to keep their optimism despite some foreseeable changes in economic policies. The Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 6.0%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 5.2%, the iShares iBoxx High Grade Corporate Bond Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) was up […]
A Look Back at 2016
As we begin 2017, we reflect upon the returns of the previous year: the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 11.9%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 16.5%, the iShares iBoxx High Grade Corporate Bond Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) was up 6.2%, while its high yield version, the largest […]
The S&P 500 was up 3.85% for the three-month period ending September 30th, 2016, while the MSCI World Index was up 4.99%. During that same period, the Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate and the J.P. Morgan Global Aggregate Bond indices had a total return of 0.45% and 0.69%, respectively. Once again, the main global macro […]
The sell-off in the financial markets in the beginning of this year opened up a seemingly endless series of surprising events so far, namely the Japanese negative interest rate policy, the European Central Bank’s program to purchase corporate bonds, the not-so-clear Fed’s path towards normalization and the unexpected result of the British referendum. […]
In late January, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) surprised global markets with its historical decision to introduce a negative interest rate policy (NIRP) for the first time in its history. In early March, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced a much anticipated stimulus with a broad spectrum of strong policy decisions. These […]
Since the 2008 financial crisis, asset allocation has played an important role for portfolio returns with both equity and fixed income generally delivering good returns driven by steady economic growth, low inflation and a loose monetary policy. However, last year, equity and fixed income markets bucked the trend. In fact, the U.S. stock markets […]
