Description: Reviews book entitled An Introduction to Risk and Return from Common Stocks by Richard Brealey. The book provides a description of the stock market, as seen through the eyes of the statistician.

Description: This article discusses the magnitude and impact of the subprime crisis.

Description: This report presents the results of the 1986-92 Credit Risk Event 'CRE' Loss Experience Study which represents a continuation of the 1986-89 pilot study analyzing loss experience by institutional investors on private placement bonds. This continuing study is being conducted under the auspices of the Society of Actuaries and involves thirteen institutional investors which accounted for between 34% and 42% of outstanding life insurance company private placement bond holdings during the study period. The study measures incidence rates, loss severities and economic loss rates associated with credit risk events for privately placed debt during the years 1986-92. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1997-98 Reports.

Description: This article delves into the challenges and opportunities of the Asian insurance market, focusing on insurance investment management.

Description: Investment Fallacies: The "Dollar Bill" Fallacy

Description: This articles educates the reader on Mortgage-Backed Securities. It highlights the value of this asset class and also a few of the challenges.

Description: Investment Fallacies: The Myth of Time Diversification

Description: This panel discussion is from the 1991 Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held May 16-17 in New York. The panelists present an overview of the regulatory framework for investments, discuss emerging issues for new investment vehicles, provide a valuation actuary update, discuss the regulatory attitude toward asset securitization, junk bonds and hedging, discuss regulatory developments related to the valuation of private placement, mortgages, real estate, and other securities, and discuss developments related to the Mandatory Securities Valuation Reserve, ‘MSVR,’ and capital requirements. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 2.

Description: Increasing uncertainties and volatility in financial as well as real goods markets increasingly reveal that controlling systems based on deterministic and pseudo-exact values are insufficiently eligible to manage the business activities. This raises the question how management systems can be modified to generate the adequate management impulses in volatile periods. Risk management deals from identifying, evaluating and aggregating chances and risks, which again determine the potential fluctuation range of relevant performance indicators. Everyday corporate life shows that risk management is considered important; but the corresponding processes to identify, evaluate and report chances and risks are seldom part of established decision criteria. This “paradox” lets assume that risks are managed in various differing and unsystematic ways. The combination of traditional controlling methods and risk management is not primarily a methodological challenge. The behavior of the whole organization, practiced over a long-year period, has to be transferred into a new corporate culture of transparent dealing with chances and risks. This paper describes the necessary change management process, which has to come along with necessary methodological modifications.

Description: Describes outlook for inflation, generally higher in the US and lower in Japan/Europe. Enumerates macroeconomic drivers of inflation, and comments on the pace of inflation-linked debt issuance globally.