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Topic Review
130–30 Fund
A 130–30 fund or a ratio up to 150/50 is a type of collective investment vehicle, often a type of specialty mutual fund, but which allows the fund manager simultaneously to hold both long and short positions on different equities in the fund. Traditionally, mutual funds were long-only investments. 130–30 funds are a fast-growing segment of the financial industry; they should be available both as traditional mutual funds, and as exchange-traded funds (ETFs). While this type of investment has existed for a while in the hedge fund industry, its availability for retail investors is relatively new. A 130–30 fund is considered a long-short equity fund, meaning it goes both long and short at the same time. The "130" portion stands for 130% exposure to its long portfolio and the "30" portion stands for 30% exposure to its short portfolio. The structure usually ranges from 120–20 up to 150–50 with 130–30 being the most popular and is limited to 150/50 because of Reg T limiting the short side to 50%.
  • 391
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
1998–99 Ecuador Economic Crisis
The 1998–99 Ecuador economic crisis was a period of economic instability that resulted from a combined inflationary-currency crisis, financial crisis, fiscal crisis, and sovereign debt crisis. Severe inflation and devaluation of the Ecuadorian sucre lead to President Jamil Mahuad announcing on January 9, 2000 that the US dollar would be adopted as the national currency. Poor economic conditions and subsequent protests against the government resulted in the 2000 Ecuadoran coup d’état in which Jamil Mahuad was forced to resign and was replaced by his Vice President, Gustavo Noboa.
  • 836
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
2008–09 Belgian Financial Crisis
The 2008–09 Belgian financial crisis is a major financial crisis that hit Belgium from mid-2008 onwards. Two of the country's largest banks – Fortis and Dexia – started to face severe problems, exacerbated by the financial problems hitting other banks around the world. The value of their stocks plunged. The government managed the situation by bailouts, selling off or nationalizing banks, providing bank guarantees and extending the deposit insurance. Eventually Fortis was split into two parts. The Dutch part was nationalized, while the Belgian part was sold to the French bank BNP Paribas. Dexia group was dismantled, Dexia Bank Belgium was nationalized.
  • 790
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
2010 Flash Crash
The May 6, 2010, Flash Crash, also known as the Crash of 2:45, the 2010 Flash Crash or simply the Flash Crash, was a United States trillion-dollar stock market crash, which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes.:1 Stock indexes, such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite, collapsed and rebounded very rapidly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its second biggest intraday point drop (from the opening) up to that point, plunging 998.5 points (about 9%), most within minutes, only to recover a large part of the loss. It was also the second-largest intraday point swing (difference between intraday high and intraday low) up to that point, at 1,010.14 points. The prices of stocks, stock index futures, options and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were volatile, thus trading volume spiked.:3 A CFTC 2014 report described it as one of the most turbulent periods in the history of financial markets.:1 When new regulations put in place following the 2010 Flash Crash proved to be inadequate to protect investors in the August 24, 2015 flash crash—"when the price of many ETFs appeared to come unhinged from their underlying value"—ETFs were put under greater scrutiny by regulators and investors. On April 21, 2015, nearly five years after the incident, the U.S. Department of Justice laid "22 criminal counts, including fraud and market manipulation" against Navinder Singh Sarao, a trader. Among the charges included was the use of spoofing algorithms; just prior to the Flash Crash, he placed thousands of E-mini S&P 500 stock index futures contracts which he planned on canceling later. These orders amounting to about "$200 million worth of bets that the market would fall" were "replaced or modified 19,000 times" before they were canceled. Spoofing, layering, and front running are now banned. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigation concluded that Sarao "was at least significantly responsible for the order imbalances" in the derivatives market which affected stock markets and exacerbated the flash crash. Sarao began his alleged market manipulation in 2009 with commercially available trading software whose code he modified "so he could rapidly place and cancel orders automatically." Traders Magazine journalist, John Bates, argued that blaming a 36-year-old small-time trader who worked from his parents' modest stucco house in suburban west London for sparking a trillion-dollar stock market crash is a little bit like blaming lightning for starting a fire" and that the investigation was lengthened because regulators used "bicycles to try and catch Ferraris." Furthermore, he concluded that by April 2015, traders can still manipulate and impact markets in spite of regulators and banks' new, improved monitoring of automated trade systems. As recently as May 2014, a CFTC report concluded that high-frequency traders "did not cause the Flash Crash, but contributed to it by demanding immediacy ahead of other market participants.":1 Some recent peer-reviewed research shows that flash crashes are not isolated occurrences, but have occurred quite often. Gao and Mizrach studied US equities over the period of 1993–2011. They show that breakdowns in market quality (such as flash crashes) have occurred in every year they examined and that, apart from the financial crisis, such problems have declined since the introduction of Reg NMS. They also show that 2010, while infamous for the Flash Crash, was not a year with an inordinate number of breakdowns in market quality.
  • 2.3K
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
2010–14 Portuguese Financial Crisis
2010–14 Portuguese financial crisis was part of the more wider downturn of the Portuguese economy that started in 2001 and possibly ended in 2016–17. The period from 2010 to 2014 was probably the hardest and more challenging part of the entire economic crisis; this period includes the 2011–14 international bailout to Portugal and was marked by an intense austerity policy, intenser than in any other period of the wider 2001–17 crisis. Economic growth stalled in Portugal in 2001–02; following years of internal economic crisis, the (international) Great Recession started to hit Portugal in 2008 and eventually led to the country being unable to repay or refinance its government debt without the assistance of third parties. To prevent an insolvency situation in the debt crisis, Portugal applied in April 2011 for bail-out programs and drew a cumulated €78.0 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM), and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Portugal leaved bailout in May 2014, the same year that positive economic growth re-appeared following three years of recession. The government achieved a 2.1% budget deficit in 2016 (the lowest since the restoration of democracy in 1974) and in 2017 the economy grew 2.7% (the highest growth rate since 2000). Greece and Ireland also went into a debt crisis in 2010. Together these debt crisis of these three countries marked the start of the European sovereign debt crisis.
  • 2.7K
  • 06 Oct 2022
Topic Review
2015–16 Chinese Stock Market Turbulence
The Chinese stock market turbulence began with the popping of the stock market bubble on 12 June 2015 and ended in early February 2016. A third of the value of A-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange was lost within one month of the event. Major aftershocks occurred around 27 July and 24 August's "Black Monday". By 8–9 July 2015, the Shanghai stock market had fallen 30 percent over three weeks as 1,400 companies, or more than half listed, filed for a trading halt in an attempt to prevent further losses. Values of Chinese stock markets continued to drop despite efforts by the government to reduce the fall. After three stable weeks the Shanghai index fell again on 24 August by 8.48 percent, marking the largest fall since 2007. At the October 2015 International Monetary Fund (IMF) annual meeting of "finance ministers and central bankers from the Washington-based lender’s 188 member-countries" held in Peru, China's slump dominated discussions with participants asking if "China’s economic downturn [would] trigger a new financial crisis". By the end of December 2015 China's stock market had recovered from the shocks and had outperformed S&P for 2015, though still well below the 12 June highs. By the end of 2015 the Shanghai Composite Index was up 12.6 percent. In January 2016 the Chinese stock market experienced a steep sell-off and trading was halted on 4 and 7 January 2016 after the market fell 7%, the latter within 30 minutes of open. The market meltdown set off a global rout in early 2016. According to 19 January 2016 articles in the Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the China , China reported a 6.9 percent GDP growth rate for 2015 and an "economic volume of over ten trillion U.S. dollars". Forbes journalist argues that the "stock market crash does not indicate a blowout of the Chinese physical economy." China is shifting from a focus on manufacturing to service industries and while it has slowed down, it is still growing by 5%. After this last turbulence, as of January 2017 the Shanghai Composite Index has been stable around 3,000 points, 50% less than before the bubble popped.
  • 2.6K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
2015–16 Stock Market Selloff
The 2015–16 stock market selloff, also known as The Great Fall of China, was the period of decline in the value of stock prices globally that occurred between June 2015 to June 2016. It included the 2015–16 Chinese stock market turbulence, in which the SSE Composite Index fell 43% in just over 2 months between June 2015 and August 2015, which culminated in the devaluation of the yuan. Investors sold shares globally as a result of slowing growth in the GDP of China, a fall in petroleum prices, the Greek debt default in June 2015, the effects of the end of quantitative easing in the United States in October 2014, a sharp rise in bond yields in early 2016, and finally, in June 2016, the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, in which Brexit was voted upon. By July 2016, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) recovered and achieved record highs. The FTSE 100 Index did not do so until later in 2016.
  • 5.1K
  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
4 Times Square
4 Times Square, also formerly known as the Condé Nast Building, is a skyscraper in Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, New York City . Located on Broadway between West 42nd and 43rd Streets, the structure was finished in January 2000 as part of a larger project to redevelop 42nd Street. The architects were Fox & Fowle, who also designed the Reuters Building as part of the larger project. The 809-foot (246.5 m), 52-story building is the 28th tallest building in New York City and the 59th tallest in the United States. Owned by the Durst Organization, the building contains 1,600,000 square feet (150,000 m2) of floor space.
  • 641
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Academic Journals
Many academics are critical of the current publishing system, but it is difficult to create a better alternative. The perspective relates to the sciences and social sciences, and discusses the primary purpose of academic journals as providing a seal of approval for perceived quality, impact, significance, and importance. The key issues considered include the role of anonymous refereeing, continuous rather than discrete frequency of publications, avoidance of time wasting, and seeking adventure. Here we give recommendations about the organization of journal articles, the roles of associate editors and referees, measuring the time frame for refereeing submitted articles in days and weeks rather than months and years, encouraging open access internet publishing, emphasizing the continuity of publishing online, academic publishing as a continuous dynamic process, and how to improve research after publication. Citations and functions thereof, such as the journal impact factor and h-index are the benchmark for evaluating the importance and impact of academic journals and published articles. Even in the very top journals, a high proportion of published articles is never cited, not even by the authors themselves. Top journal publications do not guarantee that published articles will make significant contributions, or that they will ever be highly cited. The COVID-19 world should encourage academics worldwide not only to rethink academic teaching, but also to re-evaluate key issues associated with academic journal publishing in the future.   
  • 1.2K
  • 13 Apr 2021
Topic Review
Additive Manufacturing and Circular Economy
Additive Manufacturing (AM), also known as three-dimensional (3D) printing has emerged as a disruptive and powerful tool for industrial systems in the Industry 4.0 era by helping businesses flourish in the contemporary dynamic competitive landscape. However, their achievements and development highly rely on “take-make-waste” linear business models, which come, all too often, to the detriment of the environment. Hence, a shift to Circular Economy (CE) practices promoting the acceleration of the transition to resource-efficient systems and the minimization of environmental degradation is now more imperative than ever. 
  • 1.3K
  • 17 Jun 2021
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