Content (1379)
-
White papersCrisis highlights diversification
The year-to-date has been characterised by a series of geopolitical events. While markets largely shrugged off the US military action in Venezuela, the war in the Middle East triggered a sharp rise in energy prices, with knock-on effects across global markets.
-
White papersConflict affecting sentiment
The Eurozone March PMI survey fell during the previous month, indicating businesses are getting worried about the Middle East conflict.
-
White papersGlobal Investment Views - April 2026
With the Middle East conflict now entering its second month, high energy prices have produced knock-on effects across global financial markets. The US and European breakeven curves surged as markets repriced inflation expectations and the likelihood of central-bank rate cuts.
-
White papersOut of the Black Box: Uncertainty Quantification for LLMs via Conditional Probabilities
Autoregressive LLMs generate text by sampling from estimated probability distributions over the next token, conditional on preceding context. We leverage these conditional probabilities to construct an entropy-based measure of prediction uncertainty, which we term inner confidence. Predictions with higher inner confidence are systematically more accurate.
-
White papersModeling and Forecasting of Large Unbalanced Option Implied Volatility Surfaces
Forecasting the option implied volatility (IV) surface is difficult with standard time-series models because of its time-varying granularity. We propose a new two-step real-time sequential forecasting framework. The first step fits the daily surface and can accommodate any underlying specification for option prices or IVs, including dynamic option-pricing models, nonparametric methods, and machine-learning techniques. In the second step, we sequentially estimate a dynamic IV model using an updating rule.
-
White papersPure momentum
Momentum trading strategies exploit return persistence, but conventional past-year cumulative-return measures generate a noisy signal that attenuates performance. We propose a pure momentum strategy that identifies trends directly from daily returns. Our method reduces volatility, tail risk, and transaction costs while enhancing profitability. Performance is primarily driven by long positions in winners, supporting theories postulating overconfidence. The bad news, instead, appears to be incorporated more slowly. In particular, we show that omitting the most recent month is unnecessary to identify winners.
-
PodcastIran: A temporary shock or a persistent shift? - Global Investment views by Outerblue Convictions
The war in Iran has shaken markets and is threatening the stability of the global economy. As energy prices surge and the news flow comes thick and fast, this month’s host, Silvia Di Silvio, speaks to Monica Defend, Head of the Amundi Investment Institute, to hear her thinking on the crisis and how it is changing Amundi’s investment views.
-
White papersCentral Banks and bond yields in focus
“The stagflationary impulse from the conflict will reshape the growth and inflation risk trade-off, creating a policy dilemma for central banks globally. Overall, we expect central banks to postpone easing, but not to reverse it, a wait-and-see stance seems plausible and appropriate.”
-
White papersIntegrating Geopolitical Risk Into Low Volatility Factor Construction
Financial markets respond not only to quantitative fundamentals but also to narratives that shape investor perceptions of risk, particularly during periods of heightened geopolitical uncertainty. While the low volatility factor has demonstrated robust risk adjusted performance across markets, its construction is typically static and does not account for narrative-driven fluctuations in risk.
-
White papers10 themes for private assets in 2026
A resilient but uneven backdrop favours private markets. As liquidity solutions and transparency improve and deal flow recovers, privates will increasingly compete with listed markets – but outcomes will hinge on sector selection, execution and capital‑structure design.
-
White papersMarkets on a roller coaster
“The market response to the Middle East crisis has been driven chiefly by concerns about inflation. This episode reaffirms our view that investors should remain diversified and maintain multiple layers of resilience and quality within portfolios.”
-
White papersPrecautionary Liquidity and Worker Decisions: Evidence from French Employee Saving Plans
This paper investigates the demand for precautionary liquidity versus commitment contracts among participants in retirement saving programs by analyzing administrative data from the largest workplace saving plan provider in France, a country in which employers have wide discretion in structuring these plans.
