Earlier today, the first U.S. bitcoin ETF — the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ticker: BITO) — began trading on the New York Stock Exchange...see the full story on our partner's site

2021 has posed its fair share of risks to the average portfolio: emerging market disruption, Covid-19 resurgence, slowing economic growth, and rising inflation. However, model portfolios are the solution advisors can utilize to mitigate this risk. Often sought after for their ability for advisors to utilize in order to spend time deepening relationships with clients, a suite of model portfolios have popped up targeted to mitigate risks. For example, EQM Capital launched a variety of modular model portfolios that are risk-based ETFs to better suit clients’ portfolio objectives and preferences.

FINSUM: Model portfolios are expanding and changing in a variety of ways, and this means they can better suit their clients whether that's for their risk level or ESG expansion.

Moody’s Analytics launched a new platform called PortfolioStudio which is a cloud-based portfolio management tool with risk analysis built in. Moody’s staff say the tool will improve efficiently and allow managers to assess risks in their investments. PortfolioStudio will be a part of the Moody’s ‘ecosystem’ meaning it will share data, models, and assumptions across their applications, and will provide insights to their clients. They view their risk expertise as a natural fit for portfolio management and that the technology will benefit their clients.

FINSUM: Integrating credit and ratings features is a boost that Moody’s can add for their clients and gives them an edge over similar portfolio management platforms.

The bond market boom has been bad for many fixed income investors, and debt is coming to term in a higher inflationary environment which is eating up all the return. However, bond market investors are turning to factor based investing to earn excess returns. Factor investing is a $700 billion market in equities, and it dwarfs the $25 billion dollar fixed income factor market. Factor investing modifies indices based on factors they think can give an edge over traditional indices. Active bond factor investing can outperform traditional indices in rising yield environments, but factor investing is looking to rival these active funds with systemic decisions. A ‘smart beta’ approach will look to outperform in high yield and emerging market debt.

FINSUM: The extensive literature on systemic fixed income is relatively small, and that's why smart beta strategies have failed to take off in the bond market like they have in equities.

Over a hundred and thirty nations have already consented to the global minimum corporate tax, and that number just got a little larger as all G20 came forward to endorse a 15% global minimum tax rate. This was a huge win for the Biden administration and secretary Yellen who have been strong advocates, but they still face hurdles with the domestic tax code in the Build Back Better bill. The administration said that the other G20 understand the minimum could take time with Republican opposition and Democratic infighting dominating congress, and the official timeline for the G20 will roll out at the end of the week. The other topic that is driving the G20 are the world's energy shortage which is on the forefront of everyone's minds, and how the world can come together to spur production.

FINSUM:The current form of the Build Back Better legislation aligns the U.S. with the global minimum and extends tax credits for millions of low-income Americans, but we’ll see if that makes it through the Congress at the end of the week.