Professional Asset Research Articles

Financial mechanisms and trends in the functioning of asset management companies

It is shown that joint investment institutions in Ukraine perform an important function in the economic development of the country, contributing to the redistribution of capital, stimulation of the investment process and development of the stock market. Asset management companies (AMC) are an integral part of the joint investment market in Ukraine, providing professional asset management, increasing the efficiency of the investment process and contributing to the country’s economic development. The paper presents the results of the assessment of the dynamics, structure of AMC indicators according to the main type of their activity according to KVED 66.30 - fund management, and also formalized their trends for the period 2013-2022, which have high values of indicators of multiple determination. It was established that the value of non-current assets increased by 3.33 times, mainly due to micro-enterprises, small enterprises prevail in their structure. The value of AMC's current assets increased by 1.79 times, mainly at the expense of micro-enterprises, the share of medium-sized enterprises in their structure decreased, and small ones increased. The value of AMC's own capital increased by 1.92 times, mainly due to micro-enterprises, the share of medium-sized enterprises in its structure decreased, and the share of small enterprises increased. The cost of AMC capital increased by 2.22 times, mainly at the expense of micro-enterprises. The specific weight of AMC's own capital decreased from 78.1% to 67.6%, including at the expense of medium and small enterprises. On the other hand, the share of equity in the balance sheets of micro-enterprises - AMC increased from 71.4% to 82.2%. Thus, the financial stability of AMC is sufficient, but it is reduced at the expense of medium-sized enterprises, but the financial stability of micro-enterprises is strengthened. The dynamics of non-current assets, current assets, assets in general, AMC's equity is described by a parabola with upward branches. It is proven that the active participation of the AMC in the stock market increases its liquidity and stability, which creates favorable conditions for attracting financial resources. Investments made through investment funds contribute to the development of various sectors of the economy, the creation of new jobs and an increase in tax revenues to the budget. Transparency and professional asset management attract foreign investors, which contributes to the inflow of capital into the country's economy.

Reflection on Building a First Class Course in "Auditing"

"Audit" is the first core course offered by our school, relying on national first-class majors in accounting, financial management, and auditing, as well as first-class professional asset evaluation in Anhui Province. It is a provincial-level key discipline and characteristic major, and is aimed at third year students in various majors of our accounting school. On average, it covers more than a thousand students per academic year. It is a very important course in the training of accounting and management professionals. Creating a first-class course in auditing is conducive to enhancing the influence of auditing, enhancing the level of teaching staff, cultivating students' independent thinking ability, comprehensively enhancing their learning interest, strengthening the transformation and construction of professional content, innovating talent training models, promoting classroom teaching revolution, building a high-quality teacher team, promoting collaborative education, strengthening innovation and entrepreneurship education, and cultivating a strong culture of quality.

Participants in Venture Investment Relations of Innovation Activities: European Experience and Ukrainian Legal Reality

Participants in Venture Investment Relations of Innovation Activities: European Experience and Ukrainian Legal Reality

The Work of Retirement

AbstractIn the past few decades, caregivers, such as nursing assistants and home health aides, have come to compose the fastest-growing segment of the paid workforce in the United States. At the same time, corporate caretakers of workers’ savings, such as pension funds and mutual funds, have become the nation's largest investors, bound by fiduciary duties of trust. And unprecedented numbers of elder employees and retirees have become the biggest supposed beneficiaries of both care labor and trust capital, depending on health workers and asset managers in their daily lives. At the center of this emerging structure of work, wealth, and welfare lies the pension system, a telling crucible of class relations in our time. Several recent books across different disciplines examine the shifting politics of pensions in the United States and around the world. The spate of new studies presents an opportunity to explore the remarkable role of retirement funds in reorganizing labor and finance over the past fifty years. Rather than offering a historiographical critique of current work, this expository essay surveys the main findings of a larger and longer body of scholarship on organized labor and investment related to pensions. Though focused on the United States, it places the American story in a comparative context. The survey points to a fertile field for further study: as retirees have increasingly relied on professional asset managers and caregivers, the finance and health sectors have undergone converging crises over fiduciary duty and elder care, posing parallel challenges for organized labor.

Qualitative Analysis of a Kinesiology Student-Led Sustainable Exercise Program Targeting Underserved Communities.

The 3 WINS Fitness is a free exercise program delivered by kinesiology students to underserved communities without external funding since 2011. The program's wins focus on reducing health inequities, increasing community health, and student professional development. The objective of this study was to conduct a qualitative evaluation of the program's value for the participant, community, and student-instructors. We conducted 9 online focus groups (n = 51), categorized by participant role and timeline in 3 WINS: participants (4 groups), student-instructors (3 groups), and combined participants and student-instructors (2 groups). Data collection for this remote qualitative study of the 3 WINS program occurred May to June 2021. The data were analyzed to determine codes and emerging themes. Three main themes are presented: asset, health, and social connection. The asset theme was subdivided into subthemes: (1) professional asset for the student-instructor, (2) program asset for the student-instructor, (3) program asset to the community, and (4) program asset for the participant. The health theme was subdivided into (1)community and (2)personal health subthemes. The social connection theme was defined in any combination, as camaraderie, friendship, connections, community, and family. The program improves the individual participant's health and through role modeling for their family and friends, encourages others to follow their example thus providing a positive influence on overall community health. Concomitantly, student-instructors are developing into well-trained professionals. The 3 WINS as a student-led sustainable and replicable model can address the existing call from public health to reduce physical activity health-related diseases and inequities.

Visible Hands: Professional Asset Managers' Expectations and the Stock Market in China

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Deep reinforcement learning for the optimal placement of cryptocurrency limit orders

This paper presents the first large-scale application of deep reinforcement learning to optimize execution at cryptocurrency exchanges by learning optimal limit order placement strategies. Execution optimization is highly relevant for both professional asset managers and private investors as execution quality affects portfolio performance at economically significant levels and is the target of regulatory supervision. To optimize execution with deep reinforcement learning, we design a problem-specific training environment that introduces a purpose-built reward function, hand-crafted market state features and a virtual limit order exchange. We empirically compare state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning algorithms to several benchmarks with market data from major cryptocurrency exchanges, which represent an ideal test bed for our study as liquidity costs are relatively high. In total, we leverage 18 months of high-frequency data for several currency pairs with 300 million trades and more than 3.5 million order book states. We find proximal policy optimization to reliably learn superior order placement strategies. By interacting with our simulated limit order exchange, it learns cryptocurrency execution strategies that are empirically known from established markets. Order placement becomes more aggressive in anticipation of lower execution probabilities, which is indicated by trade and order imbalances.

Modern portfolio theory with sharia: a comparative analysis

Despite Muslims comprising a quarter of the world’s population, almost none of the $100 trillion in professionally managed global assets are sharia compliant. Constraints such as ESG and SRI are common among pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds. Typical constraints include alcohol, tobacco, weapons and environmentally damaging activities. Such securities are excluded from morally constrained portfolios. Sharia applies the same, but adds one more key constraint: securities with debt-related features. Otherwise, sharia is identical to most ethical constraints. This study shows the results of constructing optimized, multi-asset, globally allocated portfolios while respecting sharia. The construction of these portfolios follows contemporary regulatory standards and professional best practices that evolved from investment theory. Results indicate multi-asset sharia portfolios have at least equal return and risk characteristics to conventional peers, or are perhaps in some ways superior. Many Muslims profess to care about sharia, including with their savings. This study provides insight for professional asset managers in applying sharia with modern portfolio theory, which could substantially enhance wealth and asset managers seeking business in this sector.

To Be an Apolitical Political Scientist: A Chinese Immigrant Scholar and (Geo)politicized American Higher Education

While educating international students is celebrated as a means of promoting mutual understanding among nations, American higher education has always been entangled with geopolitics. This essay focuses on Tang Tsou, the Chinese scholar who came to the United States as a student in 1941, eventually becoming the nation's leading China expert and producing knowledge about China for the United States during the Cold War. It analyzes how Tsou navigated a complex political terrain in which his Chinese identity was both a professional asset and a liability. Examining Tsou's personal and professional decisions as well as his response to the politicization of his Chinese identity reveals the (geo)politicization of higher education more broadly.

The List of Competences of Clinical Psychologists as a Professional Asset

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How do Personal Real Estate Transactions Affect Productivity and Risk Taking? Evidence from Professional Asset Managers

AbstractWe examine the personal real estate transactions of professional asset managers to understand the effect of these transactions on professional productivity and risk proclivities. We find that real estate acquisitions lead to distractions, as evidenced by reduced performance, less active trading, and increased susceptibility to behavioral biases such as the disposition effect. We also find evidence that managers tend to increase the riskiness of their professional portfolios after real estate purchases, especially when purchasing investment properties and when purchases use extensive leverage. This suggests consistent risk‐taking appetites across personal and professional portfolios.

Sollten Follower bevorzugt professionellen oder privaten Tradern folgen?

Social trading platforms offer their users an innovative form of delegated portfolio management. Users have the opportunity as so-called traders to share their investment strategies with followers through the platform. Based on comprehensive empirical data of 183 investable portfolios of the social trading platform “Wikifolio”, this study provides new insights on the return and risk characteristics of different types of investors: portfolios of private individuals can achieve significantly higher returns and better risk-return ratios than the portfolios of media companies and professional asset managers. The differences in portfolio yield and risk characteristics could be based on selection and market timing effects.

English Pronunciation Standard Preferences among Students of Polish Universities — Self-reports

For many years now the debate as to the English pronunciation model to be selected for training both in academia and for schools in Poland has proved unresolvable. When pronunciation instruction is executed, anything that conspicuously departs from spelling pronunciation is accepted. It appears that teachers implicitly and largely unconsciously follow the idea of the somewhat impoverished instructional model of English as a Lingua Franca ELF put forward by Jenkins 2000. Until recently, no reasonable, well-argued-for alternative was available, whereas now the model suggested in Szpyra-Kozłowska 2015: Native English as Lingua Franca NELF fulfils the needs of both students in English departments as well as ordinary users of English. This paper reports on the preferences as to the desirable standard in pronunciation instruction among students in academia — but not among those of English language departments — as learners of English as a Foreign Language for whom language proficiency may be an important professional asset in their future careers. To investigate the above, a research survey of the quantitative-qualitative type was implemented in the form of a questionnaire. The focus is not so much on the numerical favourites as on the reasons behind a stated preference. The respondents seem to aspire to realistic but nonetheless high goals.

Distracted Institutional Investors

I investigate how distraction affects the trading behavior of professional asset managers. Exploring detailed transaction-level data, I show that managers with a large fraction of portfolio stocks that have an earnings announcement are significantly less likely to trade in other stocks, suggesting that these announcements divert attention from trading decisions for other stocks. This distraction effect is more pronounced for nonpassive managers who engage in active stock selection choices. Finally, I identify three channels through which distraction hurts managers’ performance: Distracted managers trade less profitably, incur slightly higher transaction costs, and are less likely to close losing positions.

The economic impact of the French language

Abstract Thanks to the French language, 77 member and observer States and governments of the International Organization of La Francophonie of all continents, with levels of development at the two extremes of the wealth scale, can maintain a regular dialogue. These states where French is an official language, often alongside other languages have a significant impact on the global economy, particularly in cultural sectors. Several studies revealed that speaking French is a professional asset and that, the mastery of many languages, including one for international communication such as French, is a decisive asset in the international competition and the globalized economies. In the same time the intensity of trade in goods and capital between the countries which share the French language as an official language allow the hypothesis of a "linguistic preference" as one of the components favorable to the economic relations between the territories. The scope of this paper is to investigate the current place of the French language in the field of business or finance, its economic weight in the cultural sector and the current need to master French to be competitive on the global labor market. The results have the mission to show the growing importance of the francophone economic space and the necessity of a bigger Romanian implication within its projects and initiatives. The contribution brought by the paper to the field of Francophone studies is significant especially for the Romanian academic environment since less attention has been given in the last decade to the French language and its inputs for the economy.

Currency Risk and Equity Allocations by International Mutual Funds

We show that international equity mutual funds underweight equity markets with risky currencies and overweight equity markets with less risky ones. This risk-management practice is an important determinant for allocations among foreign equities and can also help explain levels of home bias for individual funds. On average, this leads to a reduction of fund volatility but puts a constraint on stock-picking and performance. Our findings stress the importance of currency risk in explaining equity allocations by professional asset managers around the world.

How Do Personal Real Estate Transactions Affect Productivity and Risk Taking? Evidence From Professional Asset Managers

Housing decisions require intensive attention from households. However, the existing housing literature has not examined the potential connection between costly and time-consuming real estate purchases and the behavior and work productivity of individuals involved in the housing search and acquisition process. In addition, micro evidence on the link between home purchase decisions and the investment/risk choices of households is limited and inconclusive. Our study fills these gaps in the literature by examining the real estate acquisitions of professional asset managers. Overall, we find evidence that major purchases, such as real estate acquisitions, lead to distractions, as evidenced by reduced performance, less active trading, and increased susceptibility to behavioral biases such as the disposition effect. We also find evidence that managers tend to increase the riskiness of their professional portfolios after real estate purchases. This increase in risk is concentrated in cases of purchases of investment properties and purchases using extensive leverage, suggesting consistent risk-taking appetites across personal and professional portfolios. These findings suggest that housing transactions may shed light on the decision making, risk taking, and work productivity of a broad set of homeowners, such as asset managers, corporate executives, and even rank and file employees.

Naive portfolios, Brazilian stock funds, and individual investors

ObjetivoContrastar três opções de investimento ao alcance de investidores individuais: carteiras ingênuas de ações brasileiras; fundos de ações de gestão ativa; e o índice Ibovespa, que representa a gestão passiva. Oferecer informações sobre o desempenho de gestores de ativos profissionais neste grande mercado emergente.MétodoAs carteiras igualmente ponderadas continham entre 5 e 30 ações para manter os custos de transação baixos. A seleção de ações utilizou os componentes do Ibovespa e considerou o valor (rendimento de dividendos e relação preço/valor patrimonial), momentum (retornos passados) e liquidez, bem como o Índice de Sharpe no período 2003-2012, rebalanceando três vezes ao ano.ResultadosOs retornos acumulados de carteiras ingênuas são grandes. Eles frequentemente superam o índice para todos os valores de N. Eles também superam os fundos de ações, particularmente quando o montante investido excede US$ 25,000, devido aos custos de transação. Contudo, os Índices de Sharpe esperados fora de amostra corrigidos por erros nas estimativas são muito baixos, sugerindo que não se deve contar com este desempenho histórico no futuro. As carteiras ingênuas podem simplesmente estar mais expostas a fatores riscos adicionais, tal como os de valor, tamanho e momentum. Os resultados são sensíveis à seleção do período de tempo.Implicações práticasAs carteiras ingênuas podem ser atrativas para os investidores individuais no Brasil em relação aos fundos de ações, que parecem se esforçar para manter a volatilidade baixa e podem ser melhores quando o valor do investimento é baixo. Pode haver mérito para estratégias de seleção de ações de valor ou momentum ao formar carteiras igualmente ponderadas pequenas.Originalidade/valorO artigo contrasta alternativas realistas de investimento em ações para indivíduos, oferece uma visão do desempenho dos fundos de ações no Brasil e oferece implicações práticas que podem ser pertinentes em outros mercados emergentes.

When Michaud Optimization Fails

The Markowitz and Usmen (MU) (2003) simulation study reported Michaud (1998) mean-variance (MV) portfolio optimization superior to Markowitz (1952, 1959) out-of-sample on average in each of thirty cases examined. However, a simplified replication of the MU test found thirty percent failures of Michaud relative to Markowitz. Instances of Michaud failures were associated with asset risk and return characteristics inconsistent with diversified portfolio risk management. Risk-return properties in professional asset allocations and large universe portfolio optimizations may often be similarly perverse. The simulation framework in Michaud (1998) can be a valuable diagnostic for risk-return estimate diversification perversity when appropriately applied. Our results underscore the necessity of investment sense oversight and validation for successful application of quantitative methods.

Finding Fortune: How Do Institutional Investors Pick Asset Managers?

This paper studies how professional asset allocators such as endowments, fund-of-funds, or pension funds select fund managers for investments. We develop a simple model of their due-diligence process to motivate predictions about the timing of investment decisions. We then test these predictions using a unique dataset with detailed information on the interactions between a large institutional investor and 1,093 hedge funds over the course of 8 years. Soft information conveyed during the meetings with fund managers strongly influences the decisions. A one standard deviation increase in our proxy for positive soft information doubles the probability of fund selection and reduces the due-diligence time by 20%. Contrary to prior research, we find no evidence that relying on these subjective judgements is wasteful. Instead, in a matched sample, conditioned on the fund characteristics and past performance, the 12-month average peer-adjusted returns are 1.5% higher for the selected funds.