Description: There are many factors involved with managing the financial condition of an insurance company and the factors usually fall into on of three categories: earnings management, capital management and risk management. Transfer pricing involves assigning a price for the use of funds that are transferred within the company.

Description: An overview of the recent Advanced Risk Management Seminar New York, December 2002.

Description: Uses Blackrock's macroeconomic and style factors in asset allocation examples for an insurance portfolio and a pension portfolio.

Description: Newsletter for the Investment Section

Description: Full version of Risks and Rewards Newsletter, February 2002, Issue No. 38.

Description: The author describes two papers that find that stock returns in the 15 days around the new moon are double the stock returns in the 15 days around the full moon. Is this true, even though psychological studies have established no causal link?

Description: The impact of Fed’s QE program on the financial markets has been enormous and profound. The tapering and the eventual removal of the stimulus will be equally enormous and profound, and may be disruptive. To adapt to the potential regime change in near future, some investment strategies have been proposed: (1) shorten duration to focus on the short end of the yield curve and create laddered portfolios; (2) reduce allocation to high yield bonds; (3) rotate out interest rate sensitive sectors such as utilities; and (4) use interest rate derivatives to hedge the interest rate uncertainties lying ahead. On the other hand, contrarians who see the QE program continuing may stay the course and consider (1) adding duration, (2) gaining exposure to high yield bonds, and (3) increasing allocation to utilities and telecoms.

Description: This article is part of a 2 part series on real options analysis (ROA). Before you can understand the limitations of ROA, you must first understand the difference between risk and uncertainty. This article goes into detail explaining the vast differences between the two phenomena.

Description: Feature article describing how traditional pension asset allocations contain so much risk that the details of the “liability benchmark” have been largely ignored.

Description: The selection of a discount rate is one of the most important assumptions for the calculations of present values. The paper presents the basic properties of the key measurements of investment returns and the discount rates associated with these measurements.