I am delighted to have been “spotlighted” by CREFC (Commercial Real Estate Finance Council) as part of their women’s network. This “spotlight” is important to me for reasons ranging from the importance of commercial real estate in the multi-asset world, and personal belief in the importance of women’s professional networks and for women to become more visible professionally.

My second research project with The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) led to a ‘how-to” piece: how to use IRIS+ impact measurement tools to build an impact portfolio, a report with me as a co-author. The report focuses on the investment strategy phase of how to achieve both impact and financial goals, using the example of a single asset class portfolio in the private markets. The report is titled “Using IRIS+ to Build an Impact Portfolio”, February 2021. Read more for the synopsis of the report.

My published paper in 2013 “Understanding the S&P 500: This index offers a Lot of International Exposure”, showed that over the decade 2000 – 2010, international/non-U.S. economies increasingly accounted for the vast majority (~75 - 80%) of the global economic growth. Not surprisingly, on average ~40% of the earnings growth of the S&P 500 was from international markets, with the figure rising to as high as 60% in some years. This would imply that S&P 500 earnings growth would have a higher correlation to global GDP growth than to U.S. GDP growth, and this prediction has indeed been proven correct by recent research by Bank of America that since ~2014, S&P 500 earnings is consistently more correlated to global growth than to U.S. growth. This would also be a reason for the seeming disconnect between S&P 500 returns since the Covid trough even while the U.S. economy is still struggling: after all many parts of the emerging markets particularly Asia have recovered post-Covid much faster than the U.S.

My research project with The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) on impact investing while targeting risk-adjusted market rate returns through real assets and in private markets led to a detailed industry publication with me as a co-author. The report is titled ‘Impact Investing Decision-Making: Insights on Financial Performance, January 2021”. Read more for the synopsis of the report:

Climate Change is a much talked about issue now, with discussions around carbon emissions and efforts towards de-carbonization. Less recognized, but equally important is the issue of water scarcity. The implications of water stress are huge, and capital markets are becoming cognizant of this, creating financial instruments linked to water and thus converting water into a new asset class!

Climate change (and the corresponding mitigation efforts) are impacting many parts of the economy and financial markets, a phenomenon also known as transition risks. These structural changes will impact well-known relationships between many variables. One likely impact would be to weaken the well-known strong positive correlation between Crude Oil and Copper

The U.S. had the largest fiscal stimulus (both in absolute dollars and as a % of 2019 GDP), of all the major economies, in response to the Covid economic shock. However, the share of the fiscal stimulus spent on ‘green efforts, also called green stimulus’, was only 1.1% in the U.S. compared to 20% in the European Union (green stimulus indicates spending on clean energy, renewables, and climate change mitigation efforts).

There is a core belief in psychology that expectations can change a person’s behavior, the expectations can be imposed externally (by another person) or internally (one’s own belief). This tenet in psychology has played out in the financial markets for some time and is getting reinforced now.

There are many measurements for the state of the labor market – the headline unemployment (U-3), the broader measure capturing underemployment (U-6), labor force participation rate, layoffs data, job posting data, among others. The labor market, in general, tends to be a lagging indicator in the economic cycle. But one labor market data point that tends to be leading indicator is the ‘Quits ratio”,