Blog

Our experts frequently write blog posts about the findings of the research we are conducting.

Displaying 21-30 out of 55 results for "Equity Indexed Annuities".

Do Leveraged ETFs Increase Stock Market Volatility?

(Aug 2013)

Leveraged exchange-traded funds (LETFs) are controversial investments. Because they can be leveraged as much as 3x, and can be linked to highly volatile underlying assets, their daily price movement is typically very dramatic. Also, LETFs tend to lose value over time if their underlying assets are relatively volatile due to rebalancing effects, something we've covered in our blog post "Leveraged ETFs", as well as in our research papers, "Leveraged ETFs, Holding Periods and Investment...

SLCG Research: Structured Certificates of Deposit

(Jul 2013)

Lately, we've been fascinated by structured certificates of deposit (CDs), also known as 'market-linked CDs', 'equity-linked CDs', 'market contingent CDs', etc. Structured CDs are bank deposits that have interest payments linked to market indexes, individual stocks, commodities, or any other underlying asset. Unlike structured products, which have public SEC disclosure documents, structured CDs are not well studied and even the size of the market is not perfectly clear. We covered the basics...

Persistence Scorecard: Even Harder to Stay on Top

(Jul 2013)

S&P Dow Jones Indices has recently updated their semiannual Persistence Scorecard, which studies the consistency of returns for actively managed US equity mutual funds. Like the previous Persistence Scorecard from December 2012, the updated study finds little evidence that actively-managed mutual funds can outperform stated benchmarks on a consistent basis.

In fact, the results are rather worse than in the previous study. The report highlights three factors:

Percentage of funds in top quartile...

VelocityShares' New Volatility ETFs

(Jul 2013)

You've heard it here before: hedging equity exposure with volatility derivatives is very tricky.

While the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) and the S&P 500 are negatively correlated suggesting a possible hedging opportunity, you cannot invest in the VIX itself, you have to invest in derivatives (futures or options) linked to the VIX. The simple fact is that this indirect exposure to the VIX does not behave like the VIX itself, making it in the end a rather poor hedge to equities .

But issuers of...

Foreign Exchange Rate Fixing

(Jun 2013)

Bloomberg News recently reported that traders at some of the world's largest banks have been in the business of rigging foriegn exchange (FX) rates. An FX rate essentially tells you how much of one currency you can buy with another currency: for example, currently you can buy about 100 Japanese yen for each US dollar. The rates affect "trillions of dollars of investments" according to Bloomberg, since they are used for the valuation of portfolios, derivatives, and even equity and fixed...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - June 14th, 2013

(Jun 2013)

Former Yahoo Executive Settles SEC Insider Trading Case
June 12, 2013, (Litigation Release No. 22726)
A final judgment was entered against Robert W. Kwok, a former Senior Director of Business Management at Yahoo! Inc., for allegedly trading on nonpublic information "concerning Yahoo and Moldflow Corporation." According to the SEC, in April 2008 Kwok learned of an upcoming acquisition of Moldflow by Autodesk, Inc. from Reema Shah, "a former mutual fund and hedge fund portfolio manager at...

SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - June 7th, 2013

(Jun 2013)

Final Judgments Entered Against Former Nicor Senior Officers Kathleen Halloran and George Behrens
June 5, 2013, (Litigation Release No. 22715)
Final judgments were entered against Kathleen Halloran and George Behrens, former CFO and former Treasurer of Nicor, Inc. respectively, for allegedly overstating "Nicor's financial performance...by, among other things, making or authorizing false and misleading statements about Nicor's performance in multiple filings with the Commission." The SEC...

Dodging Hedge Fund Requirements: The Case of Mariner Access

(Jun 2013)

Nowadays, there are several ways that retail investors can purchase risky investments which would typically be considered unsuitable. For example, many exchange-traded funds (ETFs) use derivatives to offer investors access to risky asset classes (such as CDOs) or complex options positions (such as covered calls). Since ETFs can be bought and sold like any other listed stock, essentially any investor can now take covered call positions regardless of her understanding of options. There is even...

Risks of Mortgage REITs

(May 2013)

Instead of investing in real estate property directly like equity real estate investment trusts (REITs) do, mortgage REITs borrow in the repo markets and invest in mortgage backed securities (MBS) -- mostly residential MBS issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. The current environment of low interest rates has kept the borrowing costs low for mortgage REITs, facilitating their outstanding growth. The figure shows the market capitalization for all listed mortgage REITs and the...

Investors Returning to Capital-at-Risk Products

(May 2013)

Yakob Peterseil of Risk.net recently noted that "[b]anks are boosting issuance of leveraged notes linked to US equity indexes and notes that pay out when yield curves steepen." According to the article, reverse convertibles and buffered notes are seeing a resurgence as investors begin to be more optimistic about stock market growth. In addition, principal-protected structures like structured certificates of deposit and principal-protected notesare falling out of favor as attractive terms are...

55 Results

<
1
2
3
4
5
6
>