When the corn, wheat and oats futures contracts debuted in 1877, little did the 12 men who founded the Chicago Board of Trade realize they were creating a vehicle that would result in trillions of dollars traded globally every year.
How Grain Futures Contracts Revolutionized Finance – (Open Markets)
AQR Capital Management’s flagship managed futures fund lost more than $2bn of its assets in the last quarter of 2016
AQR managed futures fund stumbles with $2bn Q4 losses – (CTA Intelligence)
Total assets increased by $46.8 billion in 4Q16, ending the year at $3.02 trillion, the second consecutive quarterly record for industry capital.
Total hedge fund industry asset surpass the $3tln milestone for the first time – (Opalesque)
if portfolios managers have a difficult time sorting through the noise of the financial news, can you imagine how confusing it must be for regular investors?
How to Read Financial News Headlines – (A Wealth of Common Sense)
The year-old commodities boom is drawing the attention of some pension and mutual funds that got burned when the last rally fizzled more than five years ago. They want back in.
Fund Managers Burned by Last Commodity Slump Want Back In – (Bloomberg)
In the survey, which polled 159 state, local, and provincial government pension funds between September and November of last year, NCPERS found that nearly 40% had decreased their actuarial assumed rate of return in 2016.
Public Pension Return Assumptions Haven’t Budged: Survey – (Chief Investment Officer)
Anyone can see that MLPs and the energy ETF are up substantially since that post in February of last year – but what about those 4 hedge fund managers who ply their wares in the energy sector? How did they do in what turned out to be a difficult year for many hedge fund strategies?
4 Energy Managers You Won’t See On Bloomberg – (RCM’s Attain Alternatives Blog)
Separately, a Department of Agriculture report found that through mid-2016, metro employment had exceeded its prerecession peak by 4.8 percent. But, non-metro employment shrank 2.9 percent during the same period.
A Tale of Two Economies – (Bloomberg)
Launched last year, SparkFin is similar to Yahoo Finance but fine-tuned for a millennial crowd looking for tips on where or how to best invest their extra cash. The company’s mobile app, which specializes in generating human and machine-created stock lists, is being shuttered on Jan. 23. Instead, some of SparkFin’s lists and features will be incorporated into StockTwits’ web and mobile apps.
StockTwits swallows finance app SparkFin in pursuit of millennials – (The San Diego Union Tribune)
The department in a complaint filed with an administrative judge said New York-based JPMorgan has paid at least 93 women in four different job categories less than comparable male coworkers over the last five years.
US Department of Labor says JPMorgan Chase paid women less than men – (CNBC)
The new study — by a team of economists led by Raj Chetty of Stanford — shows that many colleges indeed fail to serve their students well. Dropout rates are high, saddling students with debt but no degree. For-profit colleges perform the worst, and a significant number of public colleges also struggle. Even at the strong performers, too many students fall by the wayside. Improving higher education should be a national priority.
America’s Great Working-Class Colleges – (The New York Times)
