Fretting over salting away enough cash for retirement against the backdrop of the helter skelter ride, courtesy of the stock market?

Yeah, it’s a thing.

In the dawning days of September, the S&P 500 index of stocks saw almost 24% fly out the window, according to Sandy Wiggins, of ACG Wealth Management in Midlothian, appearing on wtvr.com. Bonds, what’s more, typically, regarded as a safer option than stocks, also hit the skids. Through that month, Bloomberg US Aggregate – the main bond index – kissed away 14.6%.

“It’s a scary time for investors, especially those who have retired or are planning to in the next few years,” Wiggins said, reported wtlocal.com. “However, the key to successful long-term investing is to keep fear from making decisions in such difficult times. Investor psychology is such that greed in good times and fear in bad lead to overreaction and bad decisions.

“First, realize that timing the market is a losing strategy,” Wiggins continued. “By timing the market, we mean moving from stocks to cash or something else conservative with the expectation of going back when things feel better. The best demonstration of the folly of market timing is to examine the impact on returns by staying invested and missing the best return days.”

Following two years online, October 28-30, the Esports and Gaming Summit took place again onsite. Organized by Gariath Concepts, the event’s renowned as the largest Gaming Convention in Southeast Asia. “At Globe, we are very happy and excited to be part of ESGS this year. In line with our Game Well Played campaign, we have activities in our booth and throughout the entire ESGS event area that promotes multiple products, experiences, and most of all, opportunities to do good,” said Rina Azcuña-Siongco, head of Globe’s Get Entertained Tribe, during a press conference ahead of the summit.

Yet, all might not be peaches and cream on the ESG front. In recent posts, Kevin LaCroix, an attorney and executive vice president, RT ProExec, indicated ESG has a fundamental flaw: it’s void of definition, leading to what he characterized as “sloppy thinking,” according to dandodiary.com.

These ESG related trepidations are explored in a recent post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. Leveraging cybersecurity as an example, Douglas Chia of Soundboard Governance LLC, illustrates one of the “biggest flaws” of ESG is “the subjective open-endedness of what counts as E, S, or G.”

Historical lows. This year, they’ve besieged the Bloomberg Global Aggerate and Bloomberg U.S. Treasury indexes, according to etftrends.com.

As they put high risk assets in the market, investors are second guessing the role of fixed income in their portfolios. That’s where active managed funds can provide a boost.

Fixed income might not exactly be in the driver’s seat now, but when it comes to the bond market, investors can’t simply look the other way. Why not? Well, it’s not just the world’s largest securities market – and by a considerable margin – it’s also rode the wave of significant growth. And that’s both in terms of size and the number of issuers.

“Navigating the bond market is even more challenging for advisors this year as bonds fall in value,” said Todd Rosenbluth, head of Research at VettaFi. “However, the ability to tap into the expertise of experienced managers along with the liquidity benefits of an ETF has been compelling.”

Meantime, face it: many investors aren’t accustomed to the volatility and price drops prompted by dramatically growing interest rates this year, according to advisorscapital.com.

The upside? Yields on fixed income securities have really made out better than they have in years.

A niche? Hey, almost everyone has one. So why not fixed income ETFs – non-core fixed income, especially, which “play an expanded role in portfolio construction” for institutional investors, according to the results of a survey conducted by State Street Global Advisors, reported etfdb.com.

According to the report, The Role of ETFs in a New Fixed Income Landscape, of the 700 global institutional investors SSGA surveyed with an eye on upping their exposure to high-yield corporate debt over the next 12 months, 62% likely will do so through ETFs. In contrast, only 27% of investors significantly tapped into ETFs to build their allocations to non core fixed income like high yield last year.

“The increase from just over a year ago is remarkable,” the report said.

Among larger institutions, well, the momentum especially reverberates, according to etftrends.com. Sixty eight percent of respondents generating more than $10 billion in assets indicated they’re likely to leverage ETFs to erect new exposures to high yield corporate credit.

“Our conversations with investors have reinforced what we already knew – there is significant demand for more targeted fixed income products,” said Tony Kelly, an ETF industry leader. “Our initial product suites aim to create a full toolkit for high-yield investors looking to implement their specific views on the market, and we anticipate extending this approach to other fixed income asset classes.”

Yields on developed market government bonds have been soaring this year, as a result of higher inflation, sharp rate hikes, and quantitative tightening. The latter of which is what has traders nervous right now. The Federal Reserve is looking to increase the pace of winding down its nearly $9 trillion balance sheet, while the European Central Bank has also been looking to shrink its €5 trillion bond portfolio. Central banks built up their balance sheets with bond purchases to help provide a stimulus for the economy, but with the current high inflation, banks are now looking to sell those bonds. With the bond market already facing pressure due to the rate hikes, further quantitative tightening could make trading even more difficult by worsening liquidity and increasing volatility. The Bank of England has already been forced to delay its quantitative tightening due to turmoil in the UK bond market. That turmoil, which also spread to the U.S. and European bond markets, has only added to the liquidity and volatility concerns.

Finsum:An increase in Quantitative Tightening by central banks could lead to more volatility in the bond markets.