(New York)

For many years ESG had been a fairly neglected asset class. Advisors and many retail investors thought that investing capital with moral considerations would hurt returns. Over the years many things have changed, including investors learning that ESG screens have actually led to outperformance in many cases and younger generations showing that they care a great deal more about these issues than their parents. Well, those stimuli have led to huge growth in the ESG space, and are leading to big revenue gains for asset managers. Fund providers are able to charge significantly higher fees for ESG-focused ETFs because of their moral importance to clients, and this has led to good fee revenue in an industry that is otherwise seeing contraction.

FINSUM: The key thing to remember here is that ESG funds don’t cost any more to run, so this is highly profitable for asset managers.

(New York)

The ten-year treasury yield hit one year high at 1.6% on Friday, just after President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion stimulus package into law. Some are arguing that this is a new equilibrium for…view the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

(Boston)

The multinational biopharmaceutical company Amgen has agreed to terms to acquire Five Prime Therapeutics Inc. Amgen aims to improve its portfolio of…view the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

(Beijing)

The U.S. is set to ramp up its stimulus efforts as it passes the Biden Administrations' $1.9 trillion covid relief package. China, however…view the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

(New York)

The Nasdaq is behaving very oddly and it should give investors pause. It is very rare for the Nasdaq and the Dow to be this out of sync. A couple days ago the Nasdaq outperformed the DJIA by 3.5%+, something it had not done in 20 years. Some take this as a sign of bullishness, but in reality, historical precedents say that when the Dow and Nasdaq are out of sync it is bad news. In fact, the only other time the two indices were this out of sync was the dotcom bubble.

FINSUM: The bottom line here is that major Nasdaq volatility in excess of Dow moves are not good. That means days like last Friday should be feared rather than celebrated. Stay vigilant.