Initially commodity -contingent debt contracts appear to work best when a group of creditors have control over the total amount lent, rather than when a single lender acts in isolation. Should a multinational institution take the lead in developing a market for them?
A visual guide to market trading using intermarket analysis and exchange-traded funds With global markets and asset classes growing even more interconnected, intermarket analysis—the analysis of related asset classes or financial markets to determine their strengths and weaknesses—has become an essential part of any trader's due diligence. In Trading with Intermarket Analysis, John J. Murphy, former technical analyst for CNBC, lays out the technical and intermarket tools needed to understand global markets and illustrates how they help traders profit in volatile climates using exchange-traded funds. Armed with a knowledge of how economic forces impact various markets and financial sectors, investors and traders can profit by exploiting opportunities in markets about to rise and avoiding those poised to fall. Trading with Intermarket Analysis provides advice on trend following, chart patterns, moving averages, oscillators, spotting tops and bottoms, using exchange-traded funds, tracking market sectors, and the new world of intermarket relationships, all presented in a highly visual way. Gives readers a visually rich introduction to the world of intermarket analysis, the ultimate tool for beating the markets Provides practical advice on trend following, chart patterns, moving averages, oscillators, spotting tops and bottoms, using exchange-traded funds, tracking market sectors, and intermarket relationships Includes appendices on Japanese candlesticks and point-and-figure charting Comprehensive and easy-to-use, Trading with Intermarket Analysis presents the most important concepts related to using exchange-traded funds to beat the markets in a visually accessible format.
China’s bond market is destined to play an increasingly important role, both at home and abroad. And the inclusion of the country’s bonds in global indexes will be a milestone for its financial market integration, bringing big opportunities as well as challenges for policymakers and investors alike. This calls for a good understanding of China’s bond market structure, its unique characteristics, and areas where reforms are needed. This volume comprehensively analyzes the different segments of China’s bond market, from sovereign, policy bank, and credit bonds, to the rapidly growing local government bond market. It also covers bond futures, green bonds, and asset-backed securities, as well as China’s offshore market, which has played a major role in onshore market development.
Commodity-linked finance has expanded rapidly in the 1980s, but it has mainly been confined to entities in industrial countries. Creditworthiness questions, reinforced by debt overhang, handicap the developing countries in their access to this type of financing. To achieve better risk management in the commodity-dependent developing countries, the authors argue that commodity-linked financial measures have important advantages in the external financing of developing countries as compared to the traditional alternatives of foreign-currency-denominated, general obligation borrowing or direct foreign investment. The authors argue that commodity-linked financing allows developing countries that are overexposed to particular risks, relative to those in the world economy, to shift these risks to world capital markets on an ex ante basis. The study concludes by offering a number of strategic solutions involving the World Bank as an integral participant in both monitoring debt reduction and enacting a technical advice program to assist developing countries manage their financial risk.
This study reveals the extent of persistent downward trends in commodity prices on least developed countries (LDCs), small vulnerable states (SVSs) and heavily indebted countries (HIPCs) and proposes a Joint Diversification Scheme exclusively for export diversification schemes in the commoditydependent poor countries. The report also proposes and outlines the establishment of a Joint Diversification Fund, in addition to regular aid flows as a longterm solution.
The revised and updated 7th edition of this highly regarded book brings the reader right up to speed with the latest financial market developments, and provides a clear and incisive guide to a complex world that even those who work in it often find hard to understand. In chapters on the markets that deal with money, foreign exchange, equities, bonds, commodities, financial futures, options and other derivatives, the book examines why these markets exist, how they work, and who trades in them, and gives a run-down of the factors that affect prices and rates. Business history is littered with disasters that occurred because people involved their firms with financial instruments they didn't properly understand. If they had had this book they might have avoided their mistakes. For anyone wishing to understand financial markets, there is no better guide.
This paper seeks to revive the case for countries to self-insure against economic growth slowdowns by issuing GDP-indexed bonds. We simulate the effects of GDP-indexed bonds under different assumptions about fiscal policy reaction functions and their output effects and find that they could substantially reduce the likelihood that debt/GDP paths become explosive. The insurance premium would likely be small, because cross-country comovement of GDP growth rates is low and cross-country GDP growth risk is thus largely diversifiable for an investor holding a portfolio of GDP-indexed bonds. Potential obstacles to the emergence of a market for these bonds include the verifiability of GDP data, the trade-off between insurance and moral hazard, and the need for liquidity. The paper discusses institutional fixes and suggests an approach to attempting to start up a market.
A pioneering reference essential in any financial library, the Encyclopedia of Alternative Investments is the most authoritative source on alternative investments for students, researchers, and practitioners in this area. Containing 545 entries, the encyclopedia focuses on hedge funds, managed futures, commodities, and venture capital. It features
Recent events have shown that sovereigns, just like banks, can be subject to runs, highlighting the importance of the investor base for their liabilities. This paper proposes a methodology for compiling internationally comparable estimates of investor holdings of sovereign debt. Based on this methodology, it introduces a dataset for 24 major advanced economies that can be used to track US$42 trillion of sovereign debt holdings on a quarterly basis over 2004-11. While recent outflows from euro periphery countries have received wide attention, most sovereign borrowers have continued to increase reliance on foreign investors. This may have helped reduce borrowing costs, but it can imply higher refinancing risks going forward. Meanwhile, advanced economy banks’ exposure to their own government debt has begun to increase across the board after the global financial crisis, strengthening sovereign-bank linkages. In light of these risks, the paper proposes a framework—sovereign funding shock scenarios (FSS)—to conduct forward-looking analysis to assess sovereigns’ vulnerability to sudden investor outflows, which can be used along with standard debt sustainability analyses (DSA). It also introduces two risk indices—investor base risk index (IRI) and foreign investor position index (FIPI)—to assess sovereigns’ vulnerability to shifts in investor behavior.
The recent stock market bubble of the late 1990s and subsequent crash has made people more aware of the need to conduct practical financial analysis. Practical financial economics, i.e., the application of financial theory to practical financial analysis, is explained here with respect to a number of different topics, with a focus on valuation. Largely normative (instead of being theoretical, empirical, or descriptive, as most academic work seems to be), yet solidly grounded in theory (instead of being ad hoc, as much purely practitioner work seems to be), this book represents a collection of articles that are designed to have useful implications for both practitioners and academics. Much of the book is focused on the concept of practical valuation of assets, such as individual stocks, the stock market, and foreign currencies. At least partially because one of the most important financial theories, the theory of efficient markets, makes practical valuation analysis virtually useless by assuming the intrinsic value of any asset is determined by its market price, the subject of practical valuation has been largely neglected in academic research. However, the efficient markets theory itself, being based on a general assumption that investors properly value securities by their trading, requires the very practical valuation that a belief in market efficiency makes useless. Within this context, it is not surprising that individual stocks, such as Enron's, and the entire stock market itself, can be effectively mispriced, as this book shows.