Financial markets move fast. It’s tough to stay ahead of the curve and find the information that will give you an edge. That’s where we come in, providing strategists, traders, researchers and investors with the most current global view of changing investor demand and manager positioning to help mitigate risk and increase return.
“For portfolio investors, [portfolio flows] data from… EPFR… have a powerful appeal. According to one strategist, 'it is almost a crutch – they want to know the data, just because this is their business.'” –Source: Flows have powerful appeal, even as picture of the past, Financial Times
EPFR
Corporations have found value in catering to the needs and tastes of Generations X, Y and Z, identifying and understanding their values and embracing socially responsible (SRI) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria goals. Tech giants such as Google claims they are “Raising the bar in making smart use of the Earth’s resources, expecting the highest ethical standards throughout our supply chain and creating products with people and the planet in mind”. These sentiments certainly mesh with large segments of their customer base, which is not shy about demanding that they strive for these standards.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
Over the past two decades China has been steadily increased foreign access to its domestic A and B Share markets. This process started in 2002 with the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) program – greatly expanded in 2012 – and was followed by the Hong Kong-Shanghai and Hong Kong-Shenzhen connect program for qualified investors in 2014 and 2016.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
Since the COVID-19 pandemic started accelerating in Italy in late February, European markets have tumbled. Almost all European stocks are in negative territory year-to-date irrespective of sector, industry, or country of origin. In terms of scale, the quarterly drop is the highest in 33 years, and the intensity of it is unusually high - more than 35% of the total market capitalization has been lost in only three weeks.
Topic Industry News
EPFR
With the impact of the COVID-19 virus on day-to-day life and the global economy growing by leaps and bounds, fund flows are reflecting the biggest flight to safety by investors since the financial crisis in 2007-08.
Topic Industry News
EPFR
What had been a relatively measured response to the coronavirus outbreak that started in China around the New Year became an increasingly disorderly stampede for the exits in late February. As COVID-19 spread across the globe, US stock market took a series of hits culminating in a 7% drop on March 6 that triggered the so-called “circuit breaker” – suspension of trading – for only the third time since its adoption.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
With the coronavirus that originated in China renamed COVID-19 and spreading briskly, the final week of February was a brutal one for global markets. Benchmark equity indexes racked up daily losses at a rate last seen at the height of the 2008-09 financial crisis.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
It is an article of investible faith that geopolitical and financials crisis, natural disasters and epidemics translate into greater demand for gold and other precious metals. The coronavirus outbreak centered in Wuhan, China certainly fits these criteria and has generated a predictable flight to gold in its various forms. Fund flow data has, over the years, proved useful in confirming surges in demand, measuring the relative strength of that demand and identifying the inflection points that signal a shift in sentiment towards gold (see chart below). But using this information leaves investors making largely qualitative decisions about the optimum exposure to this asset class.
Topic Industry News
EPFR
More than two decades have passed since then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave the speech that many view as the catalyst for the UK’s exit from the European Union earlier this year. Speaking in the Belgium city of Bruges, Thatcher spelled out her opposition to further European integration. "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels,” said Thatcher, who had previously supported Britain’s involvement in the European Union. Brexit became a reality on the 31st of January 2020, after three and a half years marked by two general elections, two prime ministers, endless discussions about hard versus soft exits from the EU and the testing of British constitutional norms. How did this noisy saga play out when viewed through the lens of mutual fund flows? And does the fund flow perspective shed light on the investment case – and climate -- for the UK in the years ahead?
Topic industry-news
EPFR
When EPFR announced last November that the assets managed by the Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) it tracks had crossed the $6 trillion mark, it came as a limited surprise to most investors and financial professionals. Flows into these vehicles, which generally track an index or other benchmark and aim to replicate its performance, have surged since the 2008-09 financial crisis and the subsequent compression of yields as policymakers struggled to contain the damage. Both institutional and retail investors have warmed to the combination of transparency, liquidity and low fees offered by ETFs (see Chart 1).
Topic industry-news
EPFR
In the small hours of January 3, the United States carried out a drone strike on a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport. Among the seven people killed instantly was Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran. Days later, missiles fired from Iran hit the U.S. Al Asad airbase in Iraq and a civilian aircraft taking off from Tehran was mistaken for a US intruder and engaged by local air defenses, going down in flames with 100% casualties. Geopolitical events such as this have a long history of jolting energy markets. But, with the buffer created over the past decade by US shale oil production muting the classic correlation between events and markets, it requires new quantitative tools to capture the full range of market signals. A tool that we have developed in recent months is a fund-level oil sensitivity factor (OSF), one of many which can be constructed from the EPFR data.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
Energy Sector: The yin and yang of SRI/ESG If you use social media and the entertainment industry as your filter, it doesn’t take long to identify the two dominant conceptions of what it means to be an energy company. One is the classic, extractive behemoth whose mining, drilling and transportation actives destroy the environment and displace communities and whose business operations are punctuated by explosions, spills and the release of greenhouse gases. The other is technologically cutting edge, focused on renewable sources such as wind, solar and tidal and directed by socially conscious management.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
Skyscrapers are always a good indication of growth in a country. For instance, Mirante do Vale is a vast office building built in 1960 in downtown São Paulo, it used to be the tallest building in Brazil until 2014, when the Millennium Palace in Balneário Camboriú, Santa Catarina took over its place. The Millennium Palace will not remain the tallest for five decades like its predecessor, as there are at least four different projects at the completion state across Brazil, with buildings much higher than the Millennium Palace.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
Trade Wars: US vs China Trade talks between the world’s two dominant economies, China and the US, have proceeded inconclusively for the better part of three years. Going into December a firm agreement to resolve the numerous issues dividing the two countries remained elusive, leaving investors scratching their heads as they try to figure out how to extract meaningful signals from the oceans of data, tweets, diplomatic communiques, commentary and news that the Sino-US trade war generates on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
A week after they posted their third inflow record since the beginning of September, Equity Funds with socially responsible (SRI) or environmental, social and governance (ESG) mandates took in another $2 billion coming into December as they extended an inflow streak stretching back to the first week of the year. Assets managed by these funds now total over $500 billion, a more than six-fold increase since 4Q15.
Topic industry-news
EPFR
South Africa: Bond funds go where equities fear to tread When it comes to picking through the fundamentals of Africa’s most developed economy, “pick your poison” often seems a serviceable operating principle. Anemic growth, high levels of household debt, an official unemployment rate of 29%, an energy parastatal struggling under the burden of $31 billion in debt and an investment grade credit rating hanging by a thread are all part of South Africa’s current narrative. For prudent investors, the case for reducing exposure to the country seems increasingly watertight. However, a more nuanced picture emerges when South Africa is viewed through the lens of mutual fund flows and allocations, and through some of the quantitative models derived from these datasets.
Topic industry-news
