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Eurozone’s Inaction an Anchor Around the World’s Neck
The eurozone crisis continues to take a hard toll on the global economy, slowing growth in the United States, China and Japan. While European stocks rose today on the better than expected GDP growth in Germany and France, the E.U. as a whole kept with predictions and contracted 0.2%.
There are growing concerns that the current make-up of the single-currency system in Europe may be coming to end—and with good reason. European leaders continue to struggle with fiscal and economic difficulties within their countries and the burden of supporting periphery states. Growth may be up in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria (a scant 0.2 % for each), but it is drastically down in countries such as Finland, which posted a 0.7% decline in output. The third quarter should prove to be testing for the ECB, as Spain continues to rely on the central bank’s funds, and other periphery countries will begin to demand financial solutions. It has been suggested that a round of quantitative easing be put into action, but it is unlikely that the ECB would implement such a tool so soon.
About the Author
Ben Warwick, Quantitative Equity Strategies
Veteran investment strategist Ben Warwick brings 20 years of investment management expertise to AdvisorOne.com in his blog, Searching for Alpha. His market and economic insights provide readers with an insider’s view on generating alpha through asset allocation, the use of strategic portfolio “tilts” and alternative investments.
Ben Warwick founded Quantitative Equity Strategies (QES) in 2002 as a platform for implementing his quantitative investment strategies. The firm manages assets with traditional long-only equity and fixed income, private equity, managed futures and alternative investment mandates. QES has developed an industry leading expertise in building investment programs that can replicate alternative returns, while offering daily liquidity and transparency. These products include the HFRq, a hedge fund replication strategy developed in concert with Hedge Fund Research in Chicago; the Managed Futures Beta Index, with Aspen Partners; and the Nomura QES Modeled Private Equity Returns Index (PERI), which was developed with Nomura Bank and Preqin, the leading source of information in the private equity industry.
He is the author of several books, including "Searching for Alpha: The Quest for Exceptional Investment Performance," (Wiley, 2000) and "The Handbook of Managed Futures," with Carl Peters, (McGraw-Hill, 1996). He can be reached at ben@qesinvest.com.
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