​Five-year Plans: The Past, Present, and Future of China - November 26, 2020
Planning the economy is a crucial aspect of Chinese Socialism and every five years the Communist Party’s Central Committee drafts the economic guidelines for the country. Last October, the Communist Party announced the topics that will be discussed for the fourteenth 5-year plan (2021-2025): great attention will be given to new technologies and green energy. In this article, we first analyze why 5-year plans are a fundamental element of the Chinese economy. Then, we focus on the fourteenth 5-year plan from a market perspective.

Focus on Asset-Based Finance - November 25, 2020
Asset-based finance refers to a broad category of investments and lending that aims at providing funding not only to companies, in particular Small-Medium Enterprise, but in general every creditworthy borrower which is able to provide a collateral to back his/hers loan. The wide plethora of assets covered, from used cars to aviation, highlights the crucial ability of ABF to provide portfolio diversification, while rewarding with higher returns compared to the conventional forms of investment.
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Morgan Stanley to buy Eaton Vance - November 24, 2020
On the 8th of October, Morgan Stanley announced a definitive agreement to purchase Eaton Vance’s investment management business of over $500 billion AUM for an equity value of $7 billion by the end of 2021 on a 50% cash, 50% stock transaction. This announcement, following Morgan Stanley’s and E-Trade’s closing, will reshape the asset management industry and once again advance Morgan Stanley’ mission of becoming a top asset management firm. 

NTT AND NTT DOCOMO: TOGETHER, ONCE AGAIN - November 23, 2020
On 29 September 2020, NTT announced that it is planning to take private its publicly traded subsidiary NTT DOCOMO, which it listed 28 years ago. The $40bn tender offer is going to be the largest deal in the entire Japanese history (excluding banking). In this article, we analyze the deal, providing also a brief overview of the Japanese telecommunication industry.

The State of Cross-Border Deals - November 22, 2020
Dealmakers are accustomed to face uncertainty, but the latest market trends brought a grade of volatility even the most experienced investors struggle to bear. Brexit, Trade war, and now the Covid-19 crisis dealt a heavy blow to cross-border M&A activities. Here is an analysis of what happened and of what investors should expect going forward.

PE Activity during Covid-19 - November 21, 2020
It was March 11 when the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the COVID-19 viral outbreak was officially a pandemic. Since then, the emergency has evolved into a global public health and economic crisis. PE firms are deploying different strategies to make the most of the opportunities generated by the crisis. Some managers are pivoting their companies into future growth and hibernating businesses with enough reserves, while others are cutting costs in order to remain afloat.

Uncertainty in a New Age of Investing - November 17, 2020
Sustainability will be a defining theme for financial markets in this decade and beyond. Awareness among our global community and investors is rapidly shifting, so much so that we are now on the brink of a new era of investing.  It is recently been acknowledged by many financial and asset management firms that climate risk equals investment risk. We have seen and will continue to see a gradual but real transition to a low carbon economy, which will shift the way society functions and investing.

Robinhood Traders - Revolution or Involution? - 4 November, 2020
If it was hard to trade stocks in the previous years, now it is as easy as downloading an app or sending a tweet, and most importantly, it is free of charge. This kind of trend is known as "Robinhood trading", from the revolutionary trading app "Robinhood". However, it is crucial to see how theses "frenzy" retail traders are affecting the financial markets during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Incentives, shareholder primacy, and stakeholder capitalism - November 2, 2020
In this article we explore the idea of shareholder primacy and how it has affected corporate America throughout the years. We will present how manager’s interests have been misaligned with the interests of other stakeholders. The article also attempts to highlight a path towards stakeholder capitalism

COVID-19 crisis: what happened and which indicators to follow - May 20, 2020
As the global economy progresses through the current COVID-19 crisis, we are constantly inundated by new information – and it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. This article aims at providing a clear summary of the major happenings until now and help the reader understand where to look in order to monitor the recovery.

What is Risk Parity and why did it suffer this year? - May 9, 2020
​In this article we want to present an asset allocation model that has gained a lot of momentum in the last decades. We will present how Risk Budgeting works and how its employed to construct portfolios in which all assets contribute the same amount of risk to the overall portfolio risk. 

Cruising out of hard times? - May 3, 2020
​The cruise industry is probably the sector hit the hardest by the Covid-19 outbreak.
News of quarantined ships, people dying on board and port authorities denying docking have irreparably stained cruise operators’ reputation.
But beyond reputation, financial distress is what may cause the collapse of the industry.

Negative oil prices: what happened and how it will affect economy - April 27, 2020
Is it possible for the price of one of the most traded commodities to turn negative?
The reply of the market, during the COVID-19 epidemic, has been definitely yes. What happened and what will follow?

How the pandemic influences asset correlation- April 3, 2020
Since Covid-19 crossed the borders of the Hubei district, markets operators are witnessing alarming behaviours in assets’ movements. In particular, correlation between asset classes are limiting diversification strategies.

Of authorized parties and Illiquidity, how imperfections in exchange traded fund pricing occur - April 8, 2020
​ETFs are deemed to be one of the most important innovations of the financial markets in the last decades. Institutional and private investors alike are offered a tremendous variety of exposures to different baskets of Equities, Bonds, Commodities and even derivative instruments.

Ray Dalio: Coronavirus, markets and where we are (probably) heading to - March 20, 2020
While COVID-19 is spreading exponentially worldwide, the same goes for securities sell-off in global markets, driving prices down and growing concerns among investors. But there is more: according to hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, the global economy is approaching a crucial turning point, how it will be handled depends on policymakers’ decisions. One thing is sure: we are on a razor’s edge and we are dancing on it.

Negative-yielding bonds: would you ever pay to lend money? - October 22, 2019
Today, around 30% of bonds worldwide are trading at negative rates – which implies that, for up to $17tn of outstanding debt, creditors are “paying” to lend money.
From a practical point of view, what investing money in negative-yielding bonds means, is that you get back less than what you invest. Hence, a very natural question arises: why would anyone do it? 

Supreme: how to build a thriving business on hype - December 1, 2018
A very conspicuous portion of Supreme’s success is due to its drop culture. Supreme keeps the supply of some of its items below demand, adding lustre to the rest of the line and creating a thriving resale market.

Protectionism: the current situation - May 11, 2018
Last week both Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel rushed to Washington to meet Donald Trump and discuss with him about the freezing of tariffs on European aluminium and steel, imposed by the US administration and starting on May 1st, 2018. They claimed that tariffs lead to protectionism and slowly but truly to a real trade war, which is very perilous for the global economy.

Piling on debt: an alarming déjà-vu - April 18, 2018
Expansionary monetary policies following the financial crisis have produced a global rise in the level of indebtedness that, considering the impending end of monetary loosening policies, appears more alarming than ever. ​Recently, the International Monetary Fund reported that public and private sectors are now more indebted than they were at their peak in 2009.

Sustainable Investing: a virtuous spiral - April 13, 2018
Nowadays, investors have plenty of choices about how to invest their savings. Today we will analyze sustainable investments trying to understand if this ethical choice provides also economic benefits for investors’ savings.

‘Bitcoin 2.0’ - The benefits and risks of state-backed cryptocurrencies - April 9, 2018
In the past few years, there has been a great increase in the awareness level of peer-to-peer concept of private digital currencies, also called cryptocurrencies. In the meantime, more and more experts of the financial sector have openly expressed their skepticism and criticism towards some of its currently existing forms, the bitcoin, with a market capitalization of roughly 168 billion dollars, being the largest one of them.

Socially Responsible Investments: do well by doing good - April 2, 2018
When people think about finance they generally indirectly give for granted the dichotomy between profit and sustainability. In reality, we can find a strong link between the two and this link is called SRI, or socially responsible investment.
​But what is an ethical investment in practice? 

Is the student loans market going to be the next bubble? - March 20, 2018
​After 10 years since the housing market crash, most of the world economies look on their way to grow again. Nonetheless, the credit market has not stopped to be a reason for concern. There is a category of credit in the US, indeed, which have increased at such a pace to become second only to mortgages as a source of household debt, exceeding even credit card loans: student loans and other forms of Education related debt.

Volatility Apocalypse – Chronicle of a Black Swan - Feb 11, 2018
On Monday February 5th, 2018 in the market happened what most traders thought impossible: the VIX index suddenly jumped 138%, its biggest jump ever, with US equity markets down 6% in the worst slide since 2011. Why is this so important?
​The importance of this event stays all in the VIX, widely and incorrectly known as the “fear gauge” of the market, which suddenly awakened from a sleep lasted for years…. and it seems it got out of bed with the wrong foot.

Is it still worth investing in EM bonds? - Dec 14, 2017
Not only US, 2017 has been an incredible year for Emerging Markets too.
In particular, investors have seen the best return on high yield bonds in 6 years - 10% on local currency bonds and 7.6% on dollar-denominated ones - while European funds operating in EM debt have increased their masses by $63.4 bn.