Bloomberg (May 18)
“From New York to London to Tokyo, if there’s one similarity among the world’s equity markets it’s this: record highs. Of the world’s 20 largest stock markets, 14 have hit all-time highs recently…. Looming interest rate cuts, healthy economies and corporate earnings are driving the activity. And what’s more, there are plenty of potential drivers to keep the rally rolling, such as the $6 trillion sitting in money market funds, while risks remain scarce.”
Tags: $6 trillion, Corporate earnings, Equity markets, Healthy economies, Interest rate cuts, London, MMF, New York, Rally, Record highs, Risks, Stock markets, Tokyo
Wall Street Journal (April 22)
Giant investment companies like Blackstone, Franklin Templeton, BlackRock and KKR “are taking over the financial system.” They now “control sums rivaling the economies of many large countries. They are pushing into new businesses, blurring the lines that define who does what on Wall Street and nudging once-dominant banks toward the sidelines.” Their outsize roles are, according to investors, creating “risks markets have never encountered before.”
Tags: Banks, BlackRock. KKR, Blackstone, Blurring lines, Countries, Financial system, Franklin Templeton, Investment, Investors, Markets, Risks, Sidelines, Wall Street
Bloomberg (March 28)
“The risks are piling up for Japan’s currency, stocks and bonds as the nation’s fiscal year draws to an end right when many global markets close for Easter — and less than two weeks after the central bank hiked interest rates.”
Tags: Bonds, Central bank, Currency, Easter, Fiscal year, Global markets, Interest rates, Japan, Piling up, Risks, Stocks
Fortune (March 23)
“Foreign businesses’ direct investment into China last year increased by the lowest amount since the early 1990s, underscoring Beijing’s challenges to spur its economy. It also has to contend with a steadily accelerating outflow of manufacturing as Apple and other American brands begin to position new capacity in countries from India to Southeast Asia to mitigate risks from US-China tensions.”
Tags: 1990s, Accelerating, Apple, Beijing, Brands, Capacity, Challenges, China, Economy, FDI, India, Investment, Manufacturing, Mitigate, Outflow, Risks, U.S.
Institutional Investor (March 20)
Across sectors companies are tripping “over themselves to incorporate generative artificial intelligence into their operations. Not to be left out, investment managers too are crowing about their adoption of generative AI, typically in the form of large language models (LLMs).” This, however, “is a complex and expensive project with considerable investment and business risks and ethical considerations.” There should be less concern on “how these models might disrupt the investment management industry” and more focus on building “a methodology to assess the processes and procedures implemented by managers to ensure the ongoing utility and reliability of their LLMs.”
Tags: Adoption, AI, Assess, Complex, Disrupt, Ethical considerations, Expensive, Generative, Investment managers, LLMs, Methodology, Risks, Sectors
Financial Times (February 1)
“Mounting losses from banks in the US, Asia and Europe have rekindled concerns about weakness in the US commercial property market, a sector that has been under pressure from lower occupancy levels and higher interest rates.” This week New York Community Bancorp, Aozora Bank and Deutsche Bank each warned of related risks or recognized losses, which “mark the latest fallout from the… dual problems of fewer people working in offices since the pandemic and more expensive borrowing costs.”
Tags: Aozora Bank, Asia, Banks, Commercial property, Concerns, Deutsche Bank, Europe, Fallout, Interest rates, Losses, Occupancy, Offices, Pandemic, Pressure, Risks, U.S., Weakness
Wall Street Journal (December 28)
“The failure to anticipate how quickly the Fed would raise interest rates has upended banks big and small this year. Three bigger ones collapsed this spring, but it is community banks… that have been in a full-blown crisis. The losses on long-term bonds have unnerved depositors, investors and regulators who have questioned how bankers failed to properly protect themselves from interest-rate risks.”
Tags: Anticipate, Banks, Bonds, Collapsed, Community banks, Crisis, Depositors, Failure, Fed, Interest rates, Investors, Protect, Regulators, Risks, Unnerved, Upended
Council on Foreign Relations (December 27)
Development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to proceed at an exponential rate. Its rise “could mirror previous technological revolutions, adding billions of dollars worth of productivity to the global economy while introducing a slew of new risks that could upend the global geopolitical order and the nature of society itself. Managing these risks will be essential, and a global debate over AI governance is raging as major powers such as the United States, China, and European Union (EU) take increasingly divergent approaches toward regulating the technology.”
Tags: AI, China, Deployment, Development, Divergent, EU, Exponential, Geopolitical order, Global economy, Governance, Productivity, Risks, Society, Technological revolutions, U.S.
Council on Foreign Relations (August 25)
“American homeowners already coping with extreme weather now face a new risk: disappearing property insurance. Private companies have increasingly reduced coverage, concluding that the risks—and potential losses—threatened by climate change outweigh probable profits. As of now, this primarily affects a handful of coastal U.S. states, including California. In other states, insurers have substantially increased the price of property insurance.”
Tags: California, Climate change, Coastal, Coverage, Extreme weather, Homeowners, Potential losses, Private companies, Profits, Property insurance, Risks, U.S.
American Banker (August 9)
“Bad actors, unconfined by ethical boundaries, recently released two large language models designed to help fraudsters write phishing prompts and hackers write malware.” In the future, “banks and other companies may need to contend” with novel threats “as fraudsters master the use of large language models.” Companies will also need to consider many risks “when building and deploying their own large language models: theft of models; leaks of information (such as investing advice or personal transaction histories) by model outputs: and manipulation of models by poisoned data (such as open-source data that a malicious actor has intentionally manipulated to be inaccurate).”
Tags: Bad actors, Banks, Ethical boundaries, Fraudsters, Hackers, Investing, Large language models, Malware, Manipulation, Phishing, Risks, Theft, Threats, Transaction
