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BUILDING SOCIETY EXCELLENCE
CFA Institute and CFA Society network are leaders in providing in-depth insights about the investment world of today and what that means for the industry of tomorrow. Here is a glimpse at what we’re working on now and into the future. Dates are subject to change.
December 2021
In Market
ASB and IASB, two global financial reporting standards setters, are diverging on rules about accounting for goodwill on the balance sheet which could have a profound effect on company valuation.
The result of a collaboration between CFA Institute and CFA Society Germany, this work throws a spotlight on the German model of corporate governance.
With CFA Society Hong Kong, this comment letter to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing analyzed HKEX’s proposed framework for special purpose acquisition companies.
For 25 years, the Vertin Award has honored individuals who produced a body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals. In this publication, these luminaries share insights and critical investment lessons.
CFA Institute asked 15,000 students around the world what inspires and motivates them and what their career goals are. The survey findings offer useful perspectives and insights for employers and employees alike.
This online course enables participants to understand the major tools and techniques of return attribution on both equity and fixed income portfolios. (USD 249 member/279 nonmember)
February 2022
On 24 February, CFA Institute released a comprehensive, voluntary DEI Code in the United States and Canada. The DEI Code includes six principles, which, when adopted, will drive greater DEI efforts in a meaningful and measurable way.
Our investor perspective on corporate governance and regulatory supervision used the Wirecard scandal as an example.
This work lays out some of the complications of a SPAC structure and how to assess an investment either as a trading vehicle or a long-term investment strategy.
These new data sets on the Research Foundation Investment Data Alliance include access to over 80 MSCI indexes and are available to CFA Institute members on a complimentary basis.
This limited series looks at the impact of Russian sanctions and reviews the budgetary calculations on Russia’s trade balance and central bank reserves. The second article focuses on the impact on food price inflation stemming from reduced grain exports.
April 2022
This 4-module course, geared towards financial professionals, introduces data science techniques commonly used in financial services with Python. (USD 1,999 member/2,099 nonmember)
This report is the fifth in a biennial series examining how trust in the industry has evolved, while the essential characteristics of trust endure.
May 2022
Learn to apply a rigorous framework to assess and select fund managers using the latest performance evaluation skills for both traditional and alternative investments. (USD 249 member/279 nonmember)
CFA Institute is considering updating the Code and Standards in a number of ways. The Consultation Paper describes those potential changes. We invite stakeholders to review the Consultation Paper and share your feedback with us. The deadline for providing comments is 8 July 2022.
June 2022
Traditional mean–variance optimization focuses on the optimal allocation, but evolutionary finance looks for the optimal strategy. This Financial Analysts Journal paper develops a multi-asset evolutionary finance model and finds that yield-based strategies are superior.
Learn techniques to assess investment results, determine sources of returns, and evaluate investment managers. (USD 249 member/279 nonmember)
Long-term country equity premium forecasts based on a cross-sectional global factor model (CS-GFM) are superior to forecasts based on other widely used models. CS-GFM forecasts also produce significant utility gains for asset allocation.
The authors draw findings from a comprehensive universe of European-domiciled cross-border UCITS equity and fixed income funds.
Hedged mutual funds flourished following the 2007-2009 financial crisis. They became particularly popular with financial advisors because of their alleged downside protection. Did these funds deliver what they promised?
This handbook will explain how firms can meet each requirement and recommendation of the Global ESG Disclosure Standards for Investment Products
Theory predicts negative excess return for socially responsible businesses. This study applies state-of-art empirical models to a portfolio of companies that treat their employees best and finds that such companies generate positive excess return.
This paper extends the analysis of systematic investment approaches to broadly syndicated leveraged loans.
Social media is becoming an important coordination mechanism for investor concerns and actions. Could these changes lead to a shareholder democracy or a “memeocracy” dominated by social media influencers?
Master the globally accepted, practice-based approach to risk evaluation and attribution enabling demonstration of exemplary professional ethics and transparency. (USD 249 member/279 nonmember)
July 2022
This paper presents an examination of non-compliant related party transactions on the Lusaka Securities Exchange and a proposal to mitigate this harm.
This paper evaluates the pros and cons of including private equity fund investments in defined contribution plans.
This piece, the fourth in the Future of Work series, will focus on how investment industry job roles, skills, and teams are changing and what disruptors are contributing to that change.
This brief will provide an overview of selected capital markets in the Middle East, reviewing the history and, in particular, the current state of development (markets and instruments, ownership, and liquidity).
Venture capital financing rounds with transaction volumes of 100 million US dollars or more have become an integral part of the US venture capital market within the last decade. The authors aim to determine whether such mega-deals are a quality signal for equity investors in the event of an IPO.
A dynamic logistic model shows that low-litigation-risk firms outperform high-litigation-risk firms, with annual alpha exceeding 8%. Evidence suggests that the excess return comes from investors underreacting to changes in firms’ litigation risk.
Focusing on questions raised by the AI Pioneers in Investment Management report, this translated publication explains how cross-functional teams can help investment professionals and organizations develop investment processes that incorporate AI and big data.
Essentials of blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, hashing, mining, smart contracts, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and more. (USD 309 member/339 nonmember)
This paper highlights market characteristics that are relevant for material risk and discusses how to extend current risk methods to deal with these risks by using agent-based modeling and by considering the interactions of market risk and risk coming from the asset owner.
August 2022
Duration and convexity hedging strategies deteriorate when nonparallel shifts of the yield curve occur. Recasting the problem as a multifactor optimization program with leverage constraints and weight regularization can improve hedging performance.
This paper examines net of fees private debt fund performance and general partner skills, i.e., performance persistence across funds and a general partner’s ability to time the market.
Our results suggest that, by changing incentives, MiFID II not only improves the quality of individual analyst work, but also achieves an improvement in the aggregate stock price informativeness.
Learn to build financial models to better evluate investment prospects using Excel. (USD 1,499 member/1,599 nonmember)
Learn data techniques used in machine learning and ways to tell the data story using visualizations in report writing. (USD 309 member/339 nonmember)
Gain an understanding of machine learning along with the technical and soft skills needed to use it in the investment process. (USD 309 member/339 nonmember)
Examine modeling frameworks and get familiar with Python and R languages to improve investment decision making. (USD 309 member/339 nonmember)
Learn to leverage NLP in sentiment analysis for use in investment valuation models and the decision-making process. (USD 309 member/339 nonmember)
Maximum drawdowns for mutual funds are persistent, indicative of manager skill, and predictive of subsequent performance. Investors are averse to drawdown risk, with fund flows decreasing as maximum drawdowns increase.
01 August 2022
This study finds that non-G10 currencies are more vulnerable to physical risk from climate change. Portfolios exposed to currencies with decreasing vulnerability exhibit positive abnormal returns, but the relation holds only in non-G10 currencies.
Calculating breakeven volatility based on S&P 500 options data, this study builds a predictive model that provides a link between option characteristics and breakeven volatility. A simulated trading strategy demonstrates the model’s economic value.
September 2022
Allocating to thematic investments can be difficult because they have exposures to multiple risk factors. The authors propose using a framework based on robust portfolio optimization to make themes fit in traditional multi-asset portfolios.
Members can stay current on what's important in the constantly evolving investment industry with readings taken directly from the CFA Program curriculum.
October 2022
The Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index uses three sub-indices—adequacy, sustainability and integrity—to measure each retirement income system against more than 50 indicators. The Index is published by Mercer, in collaboration with CFA Institute and the Monash Centre for Financial Studies.
01 October 2022
This paper highlights key challenges faced by ESG investors and portfolio managers implementing ESG investment mandates. It then addresses these challenges focusing on relevant fund reporting, provides guidance on the information required to make informed ESG investing decisions, and proposes a performance evaluation and attribution framework to support the ESG investment management process.
Increasing use of AI in investment management poses new ethical challenges for firms and professionals. This paper examines good ethical practices for the design, development, and deployment of AI in investment processes.
Accepting Registrations
Target Release: October
The OECD Corporate Governance Committee is conducting a public consultation on revisions to the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance. The overall objective of the review is to update the Principles in light of recent evolutions in capital markets and corporate governance policies and practices.
November 2022
Gain practical guidance around climate change and climate-related finance matters in this online course. (USD 309 member/339 nonmember)
More than half of the world's total gross domestic product involves activities that are moderately or highly dependent on nature. This white paper outlines the issues, provides investors with best practices, discusses tools to incorporate natural capital in the investment process, and presents case studies to provide practical examples.
Theme: Addressing Sustainability Challenges
In the financial services context, gamification and other trends are here to stay, and we need to develop the right set of approaches to maximize their benefits. As we discuss more fully in this paper, our recommended approach is three-pronged—comprising principles, conduct, and disclosures.
Theme: Strengthening Capital Markets
The authors demonstrate that trade informativeness is highest for institutions and lowest for the retail group of traders. Algorithmic trading generally provides advantages versus manual trading, especially in certain scenarios.
All companies, even green ones, can have material climate exposure. The authors propose a better measure of supply-chain climate risks that captures price movements, shows performance patterns, and can be applied to portfolio decisions.
December 2022
Target Release: December
The authors propose a method that uses firm-level measures of macroeconomic exposures to produce better estimations for equity strategies versus standard methods. This approach has applications for equity portfolio construction.
This joint report with CFA Society Spain will focus on the impact of the impact of the EU digital agenda and fintech legislation, and map the EU regulatory agenda on fintech, as well as any regulatory changes on fintech taking place in member states. The report will be based on an informal survey that was conducted with the CFA Society network in Europe.
Theme: Using Data and Technology Developments
This paper introduces a cohesive series of models designed to improve retirement income projections. The framework can produce guidance that differs from the advice generated by models that use more basic assumptions.
This English translation of CFA Society Germany's position paper will assist in outreach activities on pensions in the EU together with the Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index.
January 2023
Target Release: January
This joint project with CFA Society France will review the claim that regulation in general and MiFID II in particular is responsible for the observed drop in market research coverage in Europe since 2000.
This report will examine if pension system design plays a role in determining pension sustainability and integrity. It will evaluate various features of pension systems (e.g., private vs. public) against the integrity and sustainability of the systems (as shown in the scores from the Mercer–CFA Institute Global Pension Index) over the years.
Theme: Influencing and Impacting the Profession
This research paper is a practitioner-focused analysis of the manner in which investment professionals have considered integrating crypto-assets and crypto-currencies into their investment decision-making processes.
Procedures for independent assurance of ESG disclosure statements.
Monograph based on the virtual event marking the 20th anniversary of the 8 November 2021 Equity Risk Premium Forum.
February 2023
Target Release: February
This handbook will provide investment and data science professionals with an up-to-date reference on fintech.
March 2023
Target Release: March
01 March 2023
May 2023
Target Release: May
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