Area: Finance
Consumer Spending and Jobless Data: a Peculiar Threshold
A 12-month high in local unemployment triggers savings behavior
One European Country Defaults: How Hard-Hit Is the Euro?
A predictive model employs credit default swaps across currencies
Rising Rents Force Families to Curtail Spending on Food and Health Care
Cost burdens affect half of U.S. households that rent, as housing shortage worsens
Less Leveraged Than the Competition: Ready to Snag Distressed Assets in a Recession
When bad times hit, highly indebted companies often have to sell operations and equipment at fire-sale prices
Credit Scores, Used to Predict Repayment, Can Restrain Economic Recovery
Rigid adherence to scoring systems can reduce consumer spending when it’s most needed
How Will You Spend Your IPO Windfall?
“Uh, I already bought a house”: Tech workers spend ahead of actual stock sales
A ‘Safer’ Treasury Bond
The government’s floating rate notes feature an added measure of security: higher interest earnings in times of rising rates
Rethinking Buy-and-Hold Investing
The case for using rising market volatility as a signal to pare back on stocks — does higher risk always mean higher return?
What Makes a True Financial Crisis?
Data back to 1870 show similarities in the worst banking system shocks — focusing on loose lending before a meltdown
What Drives LBO Fever? More Than Just Cheap Loans
Private equity investors weigh the total cost of capital — not just debt, but equity as well — when pursuing buyouts
New Appreciation for a Classic Stock Market Gauge
The relationship between short- and longer-term moving averages has strong predictive power for share price returns
Behind the Annuity Conundrum: The Belief They’re Unfair
Researchers find little commonality among haters of the difficult-to-sell retirement products, except when discussing fairness
Momentum Investing: It Works, But Why?
After a quarter century of sprawling study, it’s time to narrow the focus and settle on an explanation
How ETFs Muffle Stock Market Feedback to Managers
The rise of passive investing leaves companies mistrusting market signals on how best to deploy capital
With Bonds, the Past Can Be Prologue
Patterns in corporate bond returns include abrupt short-term performance reversals and “momentum” waves that persist
Ignorance — About One’s Investments, Anyway — Isn’t Always Bliss
Valentin Haddad’s research looks at the phenomenon of “information aversion,” when individual investors stop tracking their portfolios for fear of bad news