Recent strong performance of financial markets could be masking unfavorable longer-term trends for RIA firms. Lack of organic growth, changing client pricing preferences, and rising compensation costs pose challenges for existing business models. The effects of these trends may take years to reach a significant level, but firms that want to be well positioned should start considering strategic planning.
Some studies indicate that people are lied to more than 200 times a day, which poses a challenge for investment professionals, especially for ethical matters. But you can learn how to diagnose deception, says deception expert Pamela Meyer. Professionals need to learn skills that will help them detect deception, deal with it more effectively, avoid misguided overreactions, and improve leadership.
Taking your career abroad has become increasingly important for a growing number of career paths. But the failure rate is much higher for international assignments. To succeed, professionals who go abroad need to understand risks and how job markets vary from place to place, which are not always clear from the outside.
A new study examines likely future industry scenarios and their career implications for investment professionals. Despite accelerating technology trends, human are expected to be the traits that give professionals an edge and to become increasingly valuable. Key skills for the future of the industry will vary significantly among different markets.
"CFA Institute China 2.0 is a blueprint to pioneer a new type of professional community. The initiative is built on a commitment to professional excellence and participation, sustained by trust and teamwork, and inspired by future opportunities."
Analysts need new tools to evaluate new business models. Intangible assets are generated internally but are not reflected on companies' balance sheets, which creates a distortion. New types of metrics, lack of information and benchmarks, and inconsistency across companies present challenges for analysts.
If we stand still in a rapidly changing world, we fear we will lose our leadership position. We believe now is exactly the right time to embark on these endeavors and make changes from a position of strength with the ultimate aim of protecting—and increasing—the value of the CFA charter.
With less than one year to go until the United Kingdom formally exits the European Union in March 2019, CFA Institute sought to gauge market perceptions of Brexit in its latest member survey. The results, published in March, reveal continued concern among investment professionals about the implications of Brexit for the UK investment management industry, including its impact on investment returns and market competitiveness.
The growing importance of intangible assets to corporate success is well known and widely accepted. Given their importance, proper valuation of intangibles becomes even more essential for securities analysts, who face significant challenges in this area. So how can analysts and investors better capture this value?
Worldwide megatrends—consolidation, fintech disruption, geographical differences, and more—are converging to transform the global talent market for investment professionals. Still, experts on employment trends believe the future will bring plenty of career opportunities, but those opportunities may require professionals to consider new options.
As part of the Americas region, the sub-region of Latin America consists of societies in Argentina and Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru and is a land of opportunity for CFA Institute.
We live in a visual world.With the increasing availability of big datasets, visual data is becoming more and more essential for providing investors with powerful, actionable insights.Mark C. Hoogendijk, CFA, founder and managing director of E8 Consulting Asia, specializes in data analytics and data visualization and has presented to such local member societies as the Hong Kong Society of Financial Analysts and CFA Society Singapore.In this interview, Hoogendijk discusses the advantages and efficiencies of using visual data, the available software packages and training sessions, and the ways in which big data is changing hiring practices in the profession. Mark C. Hoogendijk, CFA How is big data changing the investment profession?In the finance industry now, there's an increased emphasis being placed not only on being a quant but also on being a data scientist.If you look at investments analytics, more and more is being requested of the analyst in terms of how much data they analyze.Historically, analysts look at the balance sheet.They interview the board.They compare similar companies in the industry.These days, research analysts, portfolio managers, and hedge fund managers have the ability to access many other datasets.Given that datasets are becoming bigger and bigger, many tools that analysts use (such as Excel) are coming up short.People are slowly understanding that they need more powerful programs.So, they're starting to hire programming analysts. How fast is data analytics growing?It's definitely picking up momentum.We're actually advancing very fast.Bloomberg recently posted an article about the huge number of hedge funds that are now deploying machine learningdeep-learning AI-in their investment tactics.Firms are hiring data scientists more than ever.These are people who have a quantitative background and also a statistical backgroundwho are also able to do data mining, to work with huge datasets.One of the best examples of this is Renaissance Technologies, given how well they've done.This is a trend that will definitely continue and at a much faster pace than we're currently experiencing. How do we move from data analytics to visualization? Do you recommend hiring a full-time person?I would take most of the people who are spending time on data analytics and train them on data visualization.If you simply hired one or two specialists in data visualization, they might not directly understand what the risk manager
“There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution for our members. We have to tailor our services to respond to the demands of very different markets.”
“The geographical reach of the CFA Society network, together with its local knowledge and connections, adds materially to the capabilities of CFA Institute.”
We've all experienced variations of stress: mental and physical fatigue, loss of focus, a lack of interest, emotional upheaval, feelings of insecurity or constant edginess, and eventually pure exhaustion.These are some of the classic symptoms of stress that, if left unchecked for an extended period of time, can lead to full-blown burnout.Before you fully accept that these uncomfortable emotions and physical manifestations are a mainstay in your life, a deeper understanding can help you break the stress cycle and banish burnout.Practical, everyday solutions for both your professional and personal life can help you get the upper hand.According to Christina Maslach, professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of several books and multiple articles on burnout, today's workforce across many occupations is facing job burnout at an alarming rate-some might even say at epidemic proportions.Though a number of factors contribute to the problem, a primary reason appears to be workers at all levels feeling alienated, insecure, misunderstood, and undervalued.
