The migration of sophisticated games onto mobile devices, which originated in Asia, has triggered explosive digital gaming growth worldwide.

Lazard Insights

State of Play

Agriculture’s dual nature as an essential resource and a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions poses a unique challenge, but we believe companies that provide exposure to solutions at the intersection of food production and environmental sustainability may be rewarded by the market in the long term.

Setting the Table for 10 Billion: The Need for Sustainable Agriculture

If inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target through 2022 and then stabilizes at or slightly above 2% thereafter, it will mark a major turning point for interest rates.

Are Inflation Concerns Inflated?

SPACs, special purpose acquisition corporations, have become an attractive alternative to traditional IPOs. PIPEs—private investments in public equity—may well offer the most promising entry point.

How SPAC Skepticism Has Given PIPE Investors an Edge

With yields close to their historic bottom and jittery markets anticipating resurgent inflation, we believe investors should no longer count on returns on “risk-free” income keeping pace with rising prices. In our view, diversification across fixed income sectors with global exposures provides an essential foundation for withstanding and ultimately prospering in this environment.

Searching For Stable Income In Volatile Times

The now ubiquitous bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are creating a decentralized, alternative global financial system. Hoping to push back against the competition, central banks, led by the People’s Bank of China, are investigating what it would take to launch their own digital currencies.

Beyond Cash: China Pulls Central Banks into the Digital Currency Race

We answer the question on many investors’ minds: Is there still a role for actively managed, broadly diversified portfolios that make investment decisions based on corporate fundamentals?

Diversification Under Fire

In this Insights, we discuss the enormous and fundamental implications changing demographics will have in determining the fate of entire industries as new technologies and ecosystems come into favor and replace old products and services.

Demographic Investing

The 5G wireless network promises to revolutionize the internet, but no matter which nation ultimately assumes global leadership, the competition itself should create enormous opportunities for investors.

Game On! The Race to Build the World’s 5G Network

When the banks stumble, the economy can falter, as it did in the global financial crisis a decade ago. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic poses sizable risks for the US banking system, risks which the stock market appears to have more than priced in.

Are Banks Today the Problem or the Solution?

Have markets overplayed the threat of sovereign emerging market defaults? We believe the widespread misperception about the risk defaults pose to emerging markets debt has created some of the most compelling alpha opportunities on offer in today’s markets.

The Great Emerging Misconception

We use a case study on water risk in the global beverage industry to show how sustainability has many profound and far-reaching implications.

The Value of Water

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced extraordinary uncertainty and volatility to financial markets and put volatility forecasting strategies to the test.

Volatility’s Return: An Asset Allocator’s View of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Behind the headlines, some of the world’s biggest commodity-driven emerging markets are “getting it.” They’re cleaning up corporate governance, advancing shareholders’ interests, and inviting private investment. Russia, which had the world’s best-performing stock market in 2019, is a beneficiary of this emerging trend and we think Brazil may be next. 

Re-emerging Markets

A decade of central bank easing, and the resulting low-volatility environment, has made many investors complacent about risk management.

Don’t Let Risk Eat Your Alpha

Lazard Insights Conference Calls are part of an ongoing series of conference calls discussing timely issues in today's market. The calls are not specific to any Lazard product, and are designed to bring value-added insights to clients and prospects and to promote our intellectual capital. © 2018 Lazard Asset Management LLC.

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