The Global Investment Report

With ESG ETFs getting a significant share of the newly created ETF landscape, there is some pretty important differences among the different ETF providers that can be fairly difficult to navigate. With the addition of a much larger offer of Fixed Income ETFs, one can now build pretty robust and attractive diversified and Multi-Asset ETFs.

Nutmeg has been a pioneer in ESG investing among digital wealth managers in Europe and has currently more than 25% of its asset and customers in ESG.

US Large Cap investing has proven a particular difficult market to generate alpha.

The VanEck Vectors Morningstar US Wide Moat ETF has generated significantly outperformance compared to the S&P 500 in most years since inception in 2015.

Join this webcast as Martijn Rozemuller and Brandon Rakszawski explain the underlying philosophy and investment process.

Speakers:
Martijn Rozemuller, CEO, VanEck
Brandon Rakszawski, Senior ETF Product Manager, VanEck

Chinese stocks produced one of the strongest returns of major equity markets in 2020, a welcome result for those betting on China’s rapid economic growth and low correlation with other global markets. On top of a compelling beta story, roughly 85% of trading in China is done by amateur retail investors, leading to rampant mispricings and the potential for intelligent strategies to yield large behavioral alpha. At the same time, mainland China’s markets carry an array of special risks, from questionable accounting and often confusing regulations to state-owned companies with weak governance and poor performance—the quintessential value traps.

As China’s economy becomes “too big to ignore”, ETF investors looking for exposure will need navigate these unique challenges and opportunities. In this talk, Phillip Wool, Rayliant’s Head of Investment Solutions and a portfolio manager of Rayliant’s Quantamental China Equity ETF (RAYC), will explain why active management is an essential piece of the investing puzzle for Chinese stocks.

Phillip will cover the pitfalls of passive ETF design in a retail-dominated market with a nuanced investment landscape, and explain how an active approach to building ETFs for China A shares manages risk and exploits behavioral bias to fully capture the benefits Chinese equities have to offer.

Is 2021 the year of actively managed bond funds?

The growth in choices of bond funds ranging from passive to active continues. What you need to know about the myths and realities of the bond market and fund performance.

Join this discussion as we cover:
-The risks in manager selection
-The hard choice to make: active management or passive?
-Bond funds or ETFs: strengths & weaknesses of both
- When bonds go from boring to bad

Traditionally, portfolio construction sees diversification as a problem best solved by a basic mix of asset classes split up by region or country. However the modern world we live in is very different from the one in which these concepts were formed. Geopolitical issues heighten macro-economic effects. Technology has helped reduced home bias in portfolios but also increased global correlations materially.

At the same time, traditional portfolio hedges yield little in way of return but still subject investors to risk. In this talk, Chris Marshall, head of Investment Strategy at Dragon IM will outline how ETFs and their easy-to-implement offering of style and factor diversification provide an important tool in the new era of strategic portfolio construction.

Sustainable Investing developed from a niche product a few years ago into mainstream investing over the last two years. During and after the COVID crash in 2020, ESG ETF´s attracted billions of inflows as ESG indices outperformed “conventional” equity indices.

Join this webinar to find out more about:

*Different approaches to ESG- and Low Carbon investments and their drivers of risk and return with a focus on well-known factor exposures.
*Passive strategies with a low tracking error to traditional benchmarks and the question, if they can add economic value beyond “doing good”.
*Data challenges in ESG and the risks of quantitative ESG strategies of index providers delivered via ETF´s.
*Factor Investing in combination with carbon footprint reduction and if this combination can deliver a better risk-/return trade-off than passive approaches via ETF or active Long Only-strategies

The Global Economy at the beginning of this year was hit by arguably two black swan events. The collapse of OPEC-Russia cooperation on oil production has triggered a financial market shock. This event was however dwarfed by a coronavirus-induced growth shock on an unprecedented scale. Theoretically, we should have been prepared.

We live in an era of rapidly changing global landscapes and local environments. Viruses with RNA as their genetic material can quickly adapt to and exploit these varying conditions” – This and similar quotes, which were warning us even more explicitly about a potential pandemic, we could have read in books published already five or even 10 years ago. And indeed the risk – the “spread of infectious diseases” - featured as second on the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk by impact register in 2015. Yet, just a year later it went down to 8th position and has featured even lower than that (in 10th place) in the last 3 years. 'Climate action failure' and 'weapons of mass distraction' risks took over the prominent positions on the risk register.

But how are companies preparing for and hedging against low probability, high impact risks?

Should black swans events be hedged against or is this an ‘opportunity’ to re-design business models?

Can these risks be hedged and/or insured? At what cost (if at all)?

Who ‘owns’ these risks in the organisation and how can Boards add the most value?

Are issues like Climate Preparedness put aside or are they take on a new meaning?



These and many more aspects we will be discussing with our excellent panel:

Andrew Gates – CEO – Macquarie Bank Europe
Ioannis Ioannou – Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship – London Business School
John Coley – Head of Risk Consulting Practice for EMEA – Norton Rose Fulbright
Nazim Osmancik – Chief Risk Officer, Energy Trading - Centrica
Moderated by Dana Hanby – Managing Director – ESG Nexus

This presentation will look at the new investment arena of Fintech and how Fintech and legacy providers are working together to offer value in the market. Fintech is a relatively new and emerging field in finance. This presentation will cover the following topics and more:

• Fintech - Old and New
• Artificial Intelligence
• Crowdfunding Platforms and the Three Types of Crowdfunding
• Reg CF – Registered Crowdfunding
• Online Financial Planning Applications
• Other Topics

In recent years, US stocks have far outperformed international stocks. Growth stocks have far outperformed value stocks. This has led to question the benefits of diversification and ask what they should do when an investment strategy performs poorly.

The goal of this talk is to answer that very question: what should you do about poor performance? We will discuss the value of patience and how the all-too-human problems of recency bias, relativism and engaging leads many investors to abandon well-thought out plans.

This presentation will explore the key requirements for capital-raising in Africa primarily from the perspective of a business which is raising capital. In addition, we will make some observations which should be useful to an investor which is considering deploying capital in Africa but is new to the continent.

There are a number of key issues for a business to consider if it is raising capital. A capital-seeker needs an honest appreciation of how its investment will be assessed by investors and the investment’s level of investor-readiness. Capital-seekers should ensure that they have good quality professional help and be prepared to pay for this. When prosecuting a capital-raise, it is important to maintain momentum and rhythm in the process. To ensure minimum disruption to the operations, it is important to understand the investors’ interests and approval mechanisms accurately. Finally, raising capital from third parties entails that you know your regulatory obligations.

As a new investor to Africa, it can be daunting to find a safe environment in which you can be confident that you are dealing with quality counterparties, that you avoid expensive mock charges because due diligence reveals fatal flaws which you should have flushed out early in the process, and manage reputational risk as you navigate cultural differences while ensuring sound corporate governance.

Since the start of the pandemic, one commercial real estate (CRE) segment experienced fast and furious acceleration, gaining in both popularity and demand as a result. Build-for-Rent - this growing commercial investment asset class focused on buying a large number of newly-built rental homes - is today rising to the forefront.

The pandemic has brought many new Build-for-Rent (BFR) home opportunities, and we believe it’s just getting started. As home builders are beginning to embrace this concept and are now assigning valuable land pipeline dedicated to BFR communities, we see 2021 as the start of a 10 to 20-year market depth.

A large new trend in 2021 will be the number of dedicated BFR communities completed and occupied from what was previously a retail lot pipeline by regional and national builders. Between the advance of BFR pre and post-covid, there will be more consideration around the design and functionality of homes and the connectivity in the communities - the latter being even more of a focus on the BFR communities to create a better sense of engagement.

Join Jeff Cline, Co-CEO of SVN | SFR Capital Management, LLC, a private, commercial real estate investment firm dedicated to the Build-for-Rent asset class, to hear about the sector that is leading the commercial real estate segment. In this presentation, Cline will discuss:

An overview of the Build-for-Rent asset class leading the CRE segment.
Financial performance compared with other investment segments.
A comparison of all CRE asset classes for investment.
A look at what’s to come in 2021 and beyond.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape the investment management story for 2021. While revenues for investment management firms remained largely intact in 2020, the pandemic still impacted the people, operations, and technology used by investment managers.

Deloitte forecasts weakness for the economy going forward until the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines. What does the path forward look like for investment management firms?

In this outlook, join investor managers and other experts as we will explore the current status and plans for achieving success in 2021 and beyond.
- Industry impact from COVID-19
- Understanding how 2020 shifted investment preferences
- Passive funds and private capital
- Market volatility and price movement at the industry sector and asset class levels
- How active managers are providing value to investors through the volatility
- Will a lumpy economic recovery favor some investment managers over others
- Talent, financial management, and operations emerging stronger than they were at the start of 2020

Panelists:
Hector McNeil, CEO at HANetf
Massy Larizadeh, Managing Director/Founder of New Horizons Advisory
Michael Koegler, Managing Principal and Co-Founder of Market Alpha Advisors LLC

End of Covid-19 crisis is in sight, equities are up, earnings forecasts exuberant. What could possibly go wrong? Soenke examines the regional differences in the recovery, fiscal policies and monetary policies.

The divergences in the world are increasing. Who are the winners, who are the losers? Should this not be reflected in market prices? He will also take a close look at the threat of inflation – in the short term as well as the long-term – and the likely reactions of central banks.

Finally the implications for strategic and tactical asset allocation – how do high valuations, inflation and regional disparities during the Covid-19 crisis as well as the market recovery impact our choices? Does current market volatility yield opportunity?

Recent months and years have once again highlighted the consequences for society of unchanged climate-damaging actions. That's because the directly measurable damages from natural disasters totaled $160 billion in 2019. And in 2020, the figure already exceeded $200 billion.

This contrasts with about $915 billion already invested in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in 2019. But studies have shown that this amount will need to at least triple by 2030-40 to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

And so it is little wonder that the biggest climate sinners are taking decisive and targeted action in 2020 (e.g. the U.S. by re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement). Therefore, "clean technologies" should also offer attractive investment opportunities in the coming decades.

In today’s webinar you will learn:

-that climate change should not only be perceived as a financial risk but also as a long-term investment opportunity
-an update on the latest political and technological progress towards carbon neutrality targets
-the concept of climate mitigation and climate adaptation as well as a selection of long-term sustainable investment trends with strong growth potential
-how to unlock value by investing into clean technology stocks while taking into account theme purity as well as ESG criteria

Investors who consider climate change not only as a major damaging event but also as an opportunity are looking at a broad investment spectrum. The topic of climate change has the potential to demonstrate once again how well investors with dedicated funds can reconcile return and sustainability goals.

Today’s credit union members expect a consistent, personalized experience—no matter how or where they interact with you: in person, by telephone, through a smartphone application, or on your website. Join us to hear from industry leaders who will break down what it really means to evolve the member experience, how to plan your member’s digital journey, and how small changes make a big difference.

The European ETF market continues to grow as asset managers, banks and insurance companies are viewing them as a strategic opportunity. Thematic ETFs, in particular, have soared in the beginning of 2021 as investors look to gain exposure to global trends.

HANetf, Europe’s first white label ETF provider, will be joined by some of their partners to discuss Q1 performance and what investors can expect going into Q2. The European ETF market is growing rapidly, with HANetf’s AUM increasing 85% during the first 3 months of 2021. The news of vaccine roll-outs and hope of national lockdowns being lifted fueled market activity and influenced many areas.

We’ll be joined by 3 asset managers to discuss the performance of their industries in the first quarter of 2021. The topics we will be discussing include:

Global equities
Decarbonisation and new legislation
Digital infrastructure and the roll-out of 5G

Speakers:
Hector McNeil, co-founder and co-CEO of HANetf
Hannah Gooch-Peters, Global Equity Investment Analyst at Sanlam Investments
Gabriela Herculano, co-founder and co-CEO of iClima Earth
Lenore Hawkins, Chief Macro Strategist at Tematica Research