By: CFA Institute Contributor

These are articles written by professionals for investment professionals. They are contributions from external subject matter experts who do not work for CFA Institute, but may be a CFA charterholder as well as a member of a CFA Society. All are experts in their field and strive to deliver useful insights that help investment professionals make better decisions.

Behavioural insights on financial advice

March 14, 2017

Saving and investing decisions are often made from opposite sides of the financial services spectrum. Advisers have the difficult job of building trust and bridging the two sides and their diverse demands. Matching the needs of retail savers with investment returns provided by users of capital is not easy as the two opposing sides — [...]
Celebrating International Women’s Day

March 8, 2017

There is no doubt that more work needs to be done to close the gender gap across many industries, from the military to elected office to tech to asset management. Raising awareness is one step along this path. To that end, today — International Women’s Day — communities across the world will reflect on the [...]
How Long Is the Investment Learning Curve?

March 2, 2017

Mistakes and disappointments are not unusual in the investment world. On the contrary, it is investment successes that are rare. Persistent boom-and-bust economic cycles underline the numerous unavoidable challenges that investment decision makers face. Moreover, professional investors rarely have a complete understanding of their own miscalculations or those of others. From poor analyst forecast accuracy [...]
Human Rights Issues and Your Portfolio

February 28, 2017

We would rather not think about human rights issues when it comes to asset allocation. In the developed world, we often treat human rights violations — modern-day slavery, child labour, etc. — as anachronisms, at least as far they concern us. Or we dismiss them as problems for someone else to deal with, whether activists, [...]
Three tips to help women start investing

February 20, 2017

Some women never start investing. My research uncovered three main reasons why many women “sit on the fence” when it comes to investing: Some women aren’t interested in investing and don’t understand why it is important. Some are perfectionists and feel they do not know enough to begin. They think the world of investing is [...]
Five rules for interviews in a new media era

February 20, 2017

President Donald Trump’s precedent-shattering approach to press relations has set a new tone in the media. Executives and business leaders from all industry sectors who sit for interviews should know that they will now face a more aggressive — and defensive — media. Trump has changed the communications landscape by redefining the role of the [...]
How Blockchain technology will change the financial services industry

February 20, 2017

Blockchain technology has been hailed as a potential “second generation of the Internet.” A whole vocabulary has sprung up around it, with an emphasis on key words like distributed ledger, cryptography, and trust. But what is blockchain, exactly? It’s basically a database where recorded transactions are copied to a participating network of computers. Since the [...]

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