NEWSLETTER of May 1, 2026

The following content has been added at finexpert:

BCG
AN IMPERATIVE FOR GROWTH: GLOBAL ASSET MANAGEMENT REPORT 2026
The asset management industry looks resilient. But the forces reshaping where capital flows and who captures it are accelerating. The era of market appreciation driving industry growth is ending. More than 80% of revenue growth in 2025 came from markets, not managers. Fees are falling, costs are rising, and margins have not moved in 15 years. Retail investors, defined contribution retirement accounts, and digital platforms are now the primary drivers of AuM growth. Nearly $124 trillion will transfer between US generations through 2048, moving to increasingly digital-native investors. The next growth model is built on distribution, operating leverage—and AI, which could deliver cost reductions of 25% to 35% and a three-to-five-fold increase in client coverage. >more

Deutsche Bank Research
DÉJÀ-VU: KREDITGESCHÄFT UND KONJUNKTUR IM ENERGIEPREISSCHOCK
Lending to businesses and the self-employed is likely to come under pressure due to weaker economic growth resulting from higher energy prices. At the same time, interest rates are expected to rise slightly. The economic recovery and corporate lending are likely to come under pressure from the renewed energy price shock, albeit not as severely as in 2022/23. We have therefore lowered our GDP growth forecast for 2026 to 0.5%. >more

Allianz Research
GLOBAL INSOLVENCY OUTLOOK: BRACE FOR MIDDLE EAST SPILLOVERS
Spillovers from the Middle East crisis will make 2026 the fifth consecutive year of rising global business insolvencies. The ripple effects of lower growth and higher inflation from the Middle East will account for one-third of this increase. The immediate implications for energy markets, shipping costs and supply chains, as well as second-round effects via inflation, financial conditions and the hit to confidence, have pushed up our forecasts to +6% in 2026 for our Global Insolvency Index  (+2pps compared to what was expected before the conflict), with the expected plateau delayed to 2027. >more

CVC
CVC CREDIT PERSPECTIVES - Q4 2025
In our latest quarterly CVC Credit Perspectives report, the CVC Credit team reflects on the factors and trends that have shaped the liquid and private credit markets. Credit Market Resilience: Credit delivered another year of positive returns despite elevated headline risk, with spreads continuing to tighten across both U.S. and European markets. Tight Spreads, Rising Dispersion: Liquid credit spreads remain near historic tights, even amid strong issuance, while dispersion has increased meaningfully as the credit cycle matures, reinforcing the importance of bottom-up credit selection. Private Credit Embedded and Enduring: Private credit continued to scale, underpinned by record fundraising, limited net supply and sustained demand for flexible capital solutions, with fundamentals remaining broadly resilient. >more

MACHINE LEARNING MEETS MARKOWITZ
Yijie Wang, Hao Gao, Campbell R. Harvey, Yan Liu, and Xinyuan Tao
2026
The standard approach to portfolio selection involves two stages: forecast the asset returns and then plug them into an optimizer. We argue that this separation is deeply problematic. The first stage treats cross-sectional prediction errors as equally important across all securities.  However, given that final portfolios might differ given distinct risk preferences and investment restrictions, the standard approach fails to recognize that the investor is not just concerned with the average forecast error - but the precision of the forecasts for the specific assets that are most important for their portfolio.  Hence, it is crucial to integrate the two stages.  We propose a novel implementation utilizing machine learning tools that unifies the expected return generation process and the final optimized portfolio. Our empirical example provides convincing evidence that our end-to-end method outperforms the traditional two-stage approach.  In our framework, each investor has their own, endogenously determined, efficient frontier that depends on risk preferences, investor-specific constraints, as well as exposure to market frictions. >more

TOKENIZED GOLD
Campbell R. Harvey, Chen Lin, Daniel Rabetti, and Che Zhang
2025
The recent introduction of tokenized gold raises some provocative questions. Is it possible to revive elements of a gold standard in the digital age? What are the economic implications of having a competing medium of exchange? Tokenized gold is much different from current gold ETFs in that it can be used for everyday payments as well as investment purposes. Tokenized gold can also produce a rate of return when deployed as a staking asset or when it is lent. Intriguingly, this new gold standard does not require any central bank intervention - consumers and investors choose to use it. Although the market is in its infancy, our research shows that tokenized gold closely tracks traditional gold benchmarks - even in times of market stress like the 10 standard deviation drawdown in the price of gold on January 30, 2026. In contrast to futures markets, tokenized gold provides 24/7 trading, providing liquidity in times of stress, such as the strike on Iran over the weekend of February 28, 2026. In addition, tokenized gold is already integrated into decentralized financial market structure. This innovation is not without risks, including redemption frictions, legal and custodial risks, and blockchain-related vulnerabilities. Overall, gold tokenization enables continuous, fractional, global exchange while offering an opt-in digital gold standard. >more