Description: This article compares the best estimates of the Investment Section members those who submitted entries for the 3-month Treasury bill rate, 30-year Treasury bond rate and the Dow Jones Industrial Average index value and year-end 1999 with the actuals.

Description: GDP growth has slowed as numerous headwinds have emerged. This article summarizes a research paper by Mark Alberts and Max Rudolph that addresses reasons why this is so and how risk managers can address using scenarios.

Description: While the major market crash subsequent to the widespread contagion of the COVID-19 virus was readily predictable, the rapid recovery and ongoing growth subsequent to it was not. Market dynamics around the recovery resist characterization by most traditional analytical approaches. In examining the circumstances around the emergence of a large retail class of investors, one sees that ingrained human tendencies, particularly optimism bias, have fueled much investor behavior responsible for the recovery. Understanding this makes it possible to predict potential future crashes and develop behavioral interventions for subsequent market recoveries.

Description: Review of the address given by Richard H. Thaler, Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago at the Investment Section at the Society of Actuaries meeting in New York on October 20.

Description: What Makes the Yield Curve Move?

Description: Feature article discussing the 2009 price action - periods of extreme distress and incredible euphoria across the global financial markets. The reversals experienced from asset class lows to their highs have not been seen in decades.

Description: The author provides insights into the reasons for the decline of Japanese government bond yields to record lows as of October 1997. This article originally appeared in the November 1997 issue of International Economic Trends, and is reprinted courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Description: Feature article discussing the too big to fail principle and whether or not strong competition is ideal in terms of the banking industry.

Description: This article, with some humor, describes a movement known as “econophysics” of physicists modeling economic systems, including capital markets, using techniques and concepts developed in studying the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of complex systems. A version of this article appeared in The Actuary UK in August 2004. Reprinted with permission.

Description: This article discusses world economic and financial trends and how people can be fooled into thinking nothing can go wrong.