Astor Asset Management is an institutional and ultra-high net worth asset management firm.

Several professional money managers were caught unawares in early 2021 by the sudden run-up in the price of GameStop stock. When the dust settled, the hedge funds that they managed lost an aggregate of billions of dollars when they were forced to purchase the price-inflated shares to cover short large positions that they held in GameStop. GameStop owns and operates hundreds of brick-and-mortar stores that sell video games.

The stated goal of impact investing is to simultaneously create strong financial returns and measurable environmental, social, or governance (ESG) outcomes from the investments that generate those returns. Perhaps not surprisingly, institutional investors are often at odds over the asset classes that deliver the best impact investing performance, the corporate targets that can best deliver desired performance.

Through the greater part of 2020, investors faced the unprecedented challenges of a global pandemic that caused the largest market selloff in recorded history, a US presidential election that bore signs of a breakdown of the democratic process, and unstable political and economic conditions in both developed and emerging economies. Most investors are discovering that 2021 is no less challenging.

For several months, Didi Chuxing was the ultimate success story: a Chinese ride-hailing startup that beat Uber at its own game and that projected a US$60 billion valuation for its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Within days after its IPO, the company’s share price plunged and it lost almost US$29 billion in market value after Chinese regulators accused the company of mishandling sensitive data about its users in China.

As economies and investment markets have grown and matured around the globe, Asia has grown in lockstep to occupy its own unique position at what are traditionally competing considerations of sustainability and finance. Taken as a whole, Asia is home to almost two-thirds of the world’s population. Two of the region’s countries, China and India, join the United States as the three highest energy-consuming countries.

The investment industry data aggregator, S&P Global, recently published a comprehensive summary of its data collection and analysis on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected different facets of the investment markets through the first three quarters of 2020. The summary also provides a picture of what investors can expect as the year winds down and pandemic-influenced trends either continue or evolve into 2021 and beyond.

As economies and investment markets have grown and matured around the globe, Asia has grown in lockstep to occupy its own unique position at what are traditionally competing considerations of sustainability and finance. Taken as a whole, Asia is home to almost two-thirds of the world’s population.

The price of crude oil at the end of the first quarter of 2020 has fallen below US$25.00 per barrel. Consumers will receive a temporary benefit from rock-bottom gasoline prices, but the reality is worldwide economic activity is too interconnected for the crude oil price collapse to generate universal long-term benefits.

Bain & Company published its “Asia-Pacific Private Equity Report 2020” near the end of the first calendar quarter. The report does not reflect a detailed look at market dislocations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic but looks into deeper substantive elements of the PE market and the trends that will likely characterize the market regardless of the pandemic’s effects.

By one measure, March 2020 introduced a new reality to the world’s financial markets. Roughly six weeks into the new year, investors woke to news of the COVID- 19 virus and its resulting supply chain disruptions, factory closures, regional quarantines, and manufacturing employee furloughs.

Investments into renewable energy systems are on an exponential growth track and show no signs of abatement as the world prepares to enter a new decade.

In the late 1990’s, Wall Street helped musician, David Bowie, to realize a payday of more than $55 million when it monetized the artist’s catalog of recorded music with “Bowie Bonds” that gave bondholders interest payments connected to revenues from that music.

The typical hedge fund manager is not in the habit of proselytizing about and searching for the gloom and doom scenarios that can wipe out investment gains. Robert Gibbins, however, is not a typical hedge fund manager.

Investors can hardly pick up a recent financial publication without seeing a headline or two about inverted yield curves. This is understandable, as financial reporters earn their salaries by writing about unusual or newsworthy events.

The Federal Reserve plays an outsize role in driving global economic expansion and contraction. How the U.S. dollar emerged as a de-facto global currency. Trade tensions, tariffs, and cracks in the dollar’s dominance and overall global liquidity. Hedge portfolio risks with gold.