What we’re reading (6/29)
“Robeco Hires Trio of Specialists in Hong Kong” (Finews.Asia). Among a few other senior hires, Dutch asset manager Robeco hires new director of client portfolio management to work on asian-focused quant equity strategies. Punchline: the “smart money” is continuing to build out its quant investing capabilities. We think there’s much more of this to come.
“The Market Partied Like it Was 1932” (New York Times). NYT points out that there is only one other instance in the history of U.S. stock markets when the market was down at least 20 percent one quarter and then up 20 percent the next—1932, during the Depression. A la Robert Shiller, U.S. stocks experienced dramatic fits and starts in the Depression, and didn’t reach their 1929 peak (and stay there) on a dividend- and inflation-adjusted basis for 20 years.
“‘Flying Blind into A Credit Storm’: Widespread Deferrals Mean Banks Can’t Tell Who’s Creditworthy” (Wall Street Journal). Banks have pulled way back on consumer lending in recent months, apparently in part because they can’t tell who is creditworthy (missed payments not showing up on credit scores because credit reporting is prohibited by the coronavirus stimulus bill in my cases).
“Trust the Experts! Lessons From the Front Lines” (City Journal). A funny take on “expertise” and the the apparent “plummeting confidence” in it. “As a confused friend recently asked: ‘Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago you were all constitutional scholars?’ He added: ‘How’d you all get to be epidemiologists?’”
“Pharmaceutical Giants Have Added $51 Billion to Their Market Value in 2020 as They Scramble to Develop a Coronavirus Vaccine” (Business Insider). A look at how the stocks of Gilead, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Roche, Sanofi, and BioNTech have performed during the pandemic. Could probably impute the probabilities the market is assigning to each of winning the race.
