CONTRIBUTOR
kelly_tang
Kelly Tang
Former Director, Global Research & Design
Full Bio
S&P 500 Performance in 2018: How Much Does Size Matter?
2018 certainly proved to be a turbulent period for equities, and the market was especially volatile in the fourth quarter, effectively wiping away all the gains that the S&P 500® had generated in the first three quarters of the year. Overall, the S&P 500 returned -4.38% in 2018. Despite landing in negative territory, the S&P…
Capturing and Evaluating Intentionality in Funds
One of the most salient themes in this year’s 29th Annual SRI Conference was intentionality. The topic of intentionality has jumped to prominence in ESG discussions—particularly in regard to ESG ratings for mutual funds—and understanding what it means is important for ESG market participants. In ESG terms, intentionality aims to evaluate whether a given fund…
- Categories ESG
- Tags environmental, ESG, ESG ratings, governance, social, SRI Conference, sustainability
- Categories
- ESG
Responsible Investor Europe 2018 Conference: What to Watch for in the Remainder of 2018 and 2019
In a prior blog, we highlighted that the recent Responsible Investor Europe Conference 2018 gave attendees the sense of a coming of age in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement that could potentially portend a future filled with a greater sense of urgency and call for action in the sustainability world. As noted previously,…
- Categories ESG
- Tags ESG, millenials, Paris Agreement, Responsible Investor Conference, social, sustainability, tcfd
- Categories
- ESG
Responsible Investor Europe 2018 Conference: ESG Grows Up
The 11th annual Responsible Investor (RI) Europe Conference, held June 5-6, 2018, showed a marked departure in ESG themes and focus from previous years. Compared with prior sessions, there was a strong shift and a coming of age in the ESG movement. For example, the title for the keynote plenary of the RI 2018 Conference…
The Department of Labor and ESG Guidance: Is the Pendulum Shifting?
In late April 2018, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Regulations and Interpretations issued the Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2018-01, clarifying guidance on how investment managers should interpret the DOL’s prior Interpretive Bulletins (IBs) issued in 2015 and 2016. Issued during the Obama administration, the IBs detail the exercise of shareholder rights, written statements…
- Categories ESG
- Tags Department of Labor, ESG, Fiduciaries, Interpretive Bulletins, sustainability
- Categories
- ESG
Reweighting ESG: Does Changing the Component Weighting Matter?
In a prior blog series,[1] we explored the relationship between environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) scores and future stock performance. In all three cases, the results showed that top quintile portfolios outperformed the bottom quintile portfolios. However, a deeper analysis revealed that the spread between Q1 and Q5 portfolios was the highest for…
- Categories ESG
- Tags ESG, institutional investor, sustainability, weighting
- Categories
- ESG
Exploring the G in ESG: E & S and Performance – Part 3
In a previous blog, we explored the relationship between corporate governance and stock performance. The results show a wide variance between the top quintile and the bottom quintile, particularly over a long-term horizon (17 years). We applied the same analysis to the RobecoSAM environment (E) and social (S) scores. To do so, we formed hypothetical,…
- Categories ESG
- Tags environment, ESG, ESG scores, governance, social, sustainability
- Categories
- ESG
Exploring the G in ESG: The Relationship Between Good Corporate Governance and Stock Performance – Part 2
Year-to-date, Facebook (FB) was down 7.13% as of April 12, 2018, compared to its 53% total return in 2017. What started as a data breach issue has expanded to encompass management structure, procedures, and safeguard concerns—issues that are all related to corporate governance. Market participants have a tendency to only care about corporate governance when…
- Categories ESG
- Tags corporate governance, Economic Dimension Score, governance, RobecoSAM, sustainability
- Categories
- ESG
Carbon Risk Integration: Interaction Between Carbon Risk and Traditional Risk Factors
The discussions on the merits of carbon awareness investing are evolving, and in a previous blog, we discussed how investors are interested in progressing from the current data-driven carbon emission framework to a risk-analysis-driven, two-degree pathway paradigm. The shift has been largely spurred by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and recommendations from its Task Force…
Exploring the G in ESG: Governance in Greater Detail – Part I
There is increasing evidence of the link between ESG and financial outperformance as better data quality, standardized data, longer data history, and heightened interest in assessing the materiality of ESG drives continued research. However, there is already substantial empirical evidence to suggest that the “G” aspect of ESG ultimately yields better corporate returns. Governance data,…
- Categories ESG
- Tags corporate governance, Economic Dimension Score, governance, RobecoSAM, sustainability
- Categories
- ESG