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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.
September 2022
In Market
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
The SEC and the CFTC jointly proposed amendments to Form PF that would significantly increase the amount of information required to be included on the form. This comment letter addressed performance-related components of the proposal.
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
In collaboration with CFA Societies in APAC, ARX organized a closed-door roundtable among industry practitioners to examine ESG investing in emerging markets. Key topics included latest trends, regulations, and technological innovations.
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
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.
Target Release: December
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
The piece considers the risks and rewards that firms must balance as they adopt AI in the investment management space. The piece also considers impending regulations.
Theme: Data analytics and technology
Consultation on sustainability disclosure requirements and investment labels.
Theme: Sustainability
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.
This guide to integrating ESG information draws from a number of CFA Institute publications to present a framework for identifying ESG information, assessing the materiality of ESG information, integrating ESG information into analysis and valuation, and presenting ESG information in research reports.
This is an update of a previous survey, conducted in 2013, “Restricting Sales Inducements,” that focused on the issue of the mis-selling of financial products and the implications of the inducements practice.
Theme: Structural resilience of capital markets
February 2023
Analysis of long-term stock data from 48 developed and emerging markets indicates that international diversification is the best risk-reduction tool. The benefits are countercyclical and persist through negative events and crisis periods.
Analysis of data from 1871 to 1925 finds that low-risk industries earned higher risk-adjusted returns and that the low-risk industry effect is not a result of data mining in earlier studies. Behavioral biases and liquidity may be key factors.
These procedures provide guidance to independent third parties for providing assurance on the design and implementation of the policies and procedures underlying an investment product’s ESG approaches for compliance with the Global ESG Disclosure Standards for Investment Products.
Public pensions pose major challenges for governments, with costs rising as a result of demographic and economic trends. This study analyzes policy implications and recommends reforms to boost private retirement savings.
March 2023
The handbook will provide investment and data science professionals with an up-to-date reference on FinTech. It will focus on AI and big data applications from the angle of an analyst, portfolio manager, trader, and private wealth manager, respectively.
A 2018 CFA Institute study found that women rarely run the biggest audits at Big Four accounting firms. A new report examines updated data to determine whether the gap has changed and how much progress is still needed.
Target Release: March
Consultation on mandatory client disclosures, linked to previous work on PRIIPs.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) released the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Framework (BRSR), a comprehensive set of sustainability disclosures covering environmental, social, and governance issues. For the first time, companies were asked to report from FY2023 on a variety of topics such as the composition of the labour force, pay, turnover rates, and other factors, split by gender.
External asset managers are often fired for poor performance, but a surprising amount of tolerance for underperformance also exists. To understand the drivers of such forbearance, the authors surveyed major institutional investors around the world.
01 March 2023
A survey of members of the Financial Services Institute conducted in November 2022 finds that most brokerages prohibit solicited sales of cryptoassets. Moreover, 67% of financial advisors said they would not sell such investments to clients even if they could. But the survey also reveals a generational divide, with early-career advisors expressing the most openness to cryptoassets and late-career advisors expressing the least interest.
The letter urges the SEC to let its no-action letter expire in July without extension.
April 2023
Target Release: April
Asset owners that comply with the GIPS standards are required to include benchmark returns in GIPS Reports. This guidance statement provides guidance to asset owners for selecting an appropriate benchmark.
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.
Theme: Structual resilience of capital markets
This study applies a new arbitrage-free model to decompose yields on Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) into expected real rates, real frictionless term premiums, and liquidity premiums. The analysis points to several key findings.
Momentum strategies suffer from large drawdowns known as momentum crashes. Partially explained by a pattern of investor speculation focusing on the 52-week high of stocks, these crashes can be mitigated by a revised strategy.
Analyzing long-run shareholder outcomes for global stocks over 30 years, the authors find that most US and non-US stocks underperformed one-month US Treasury bills. Moreover, the top-performing 2.4% of stocks accounted for all net wealth creation.
Starting in 1875, this study finds that equity and bond premiums vary across inflationary regimes, turning negative during stagflation. By contrast, factor premiums remain consistently positive across all inflationary regimes.
Firms that comply with the GIPS® standards are required to document their policies and procedures for attaining and maintaining compliance with the GIPS standards. This template provides a template and guidance to firms that wish to create a policies and procedures manual for complying with the GIPS standards.
Traditional asset pricing models do not account for short-term alpha signals. This study finds that investors can obtain net alpha by combining such signals and mitigating transaction costs. This alpha is uncorrelated with Fama–French factors.
When unloved stocks are removed from cap-weighted indexes and frothy growth stocks are added, the price impact is large. Deleted stocks also materially outperform additions over the next year. Trading rules based on these patterns produce benefits.
May 2023
Target Release: May
01 May 2023
Through this joint project with CFA Society Spain, we aim to understand the impact of Fintech developments in the EU on local markets in Europe, and on members of European CFA Societies.
This joint report will analyse the current functioning of EU primary markets and provide recommendations for EU policy-makers on measures to make primary markets more attractive for EU companies and, in general, how to facilitate access to capital markets for companies, including SMEs.
Monograph based on the virtual event marking the 20th anniversary of the November 8, 2001 Equity Risk Premium Forum.
This work will revisit the first "Future State of the Investment Profession" paper that was published 2016-2017, reviewing the megatrends and new scenarios for the industry over the next 5 - 10 years.
The proposed revised Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct have been issued for public comment. The 60-day comment period ends 6 March 2023.
This report offers an analysis of the fundamental valuation methods for crypto assets. It reviews the valuation factors and methods for different types of digital assets, with input from practitioners on the relevance and usage of these methods.
June 2023
Target Release: June
The GIPS standards recommend that firms and asset owners that claim compliance should be verified by an independent third party, to add credibility to the claim of compliance. The GIPS Standards for Verifiers include the minimum requirements for conducting a verification. These procedures provide additional guidance to verifiers for conducting such engagements.
This report considers the role of social media influencers in investor decision-making and the adequacy of the regulatory framework in a world where social media is a predominant channel for news and information dissemination.
Theme: New insights into the investment profession
July 2023
Target Release: July
This report offers an overview of unstructured data, reviews the analytical methods and tools to extract such data, and applies these techniques to Twitter data on ESG.
September 2023
Target Release: September
01 November 2023
Target Release: November
June 2024
The paper will focus on CBDCs and the implication their introduction may have on capital markets functioning and financial stability. This would make use of a member survey to gauge the current level of understanding of the effect the introduction of CBDCs may have on traditional mechanisms related to money supply, monetary policy, trading and price formation.
Theme: Structural reslience of capital markets
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