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Resiliency seems to be the most appropriate word to describe financial markets over the past years, and that held true during the last quarter. Global stock markets continued their trek upward, reaching fresh all-time highs almost daily during the third quarter; the MSCI ACWI Index gained 5.31 percent as the coordinated global recovery strengthened and geopolitical risks were shrugged off by investors. Although most major markets experienced fairly strong positive returns, U.S. equities continued to lag behind international markets mainly due to the political environment domestically.

Middle market direct lending is a large and growing component of the private debt market. The increasing importance of private capital to finance small to medium-sized businesses, coupled with investors’ interest in the asset class contribute to dynamics that set the stage for continued growth. One reason for investing in middle market direct loans is that they have the potential to provide investors with attractive risk adjusted returns, low volatility, and a hedge against rising interest rates.

Investors are adding a gender lens strategy to their overall investment approach for several reasons. They may view it as a way to leverage market systems to support progress towards gender equality. They may regard the addition of gender related variables to their investment process as a way to identify potential areas of opportunity while seeking investment alpha, sustainable growth and lower risk.

Collecting art can be a gratifying experience that can take you into an exclusive world of auction houses, galleries and artists’ studios. There’s a lot to learn in the early days of collecting, and most collectors start small. But if you want to elevate your art buying to collecting, it’s necessary to make a mental shift, including seeing how art should fit into your investment portfolio. Being guided by your heart (and your eye) is important, but making the best financial decisions requires you to also think with your head.

Investors are looking at art for more than their aesthetic qualities. It can also serve as an important portfolio diversifier beyond traditional asset classes like stocks, bonds, and cash.

Financial reports and other real-time operational data are often lagging indicators of performance. These metrics, although perhaps lacking precision, may have been sufficiently effective in the past; however, they are less so now because they lag the current cadence of information dissemination and business volatility today. The challenge for many finance functions is to try to keep pace with all the modern sources of insight and analysis that internal and external stakeholders are receiving.

The private equity secondary market has become a very mature marketplace with billions of dollars sloshing around in it. Secondary interests in well-known firms are very efficiently priced, often at par or just below par. Furthermore, leverage is being used by secondary firms to nudge their internal pricing models to predict something better than a public equity return. While there are some niche secondary strategies that can deliver outstanding returns in this marketplace, a big Wall Street secondary fund is not likely one of them.

Learning and practicing the basics of money management can have a profound impact on a young child’s life. What parents often overlook, even those who are investors themselves, is taking the education to the next stage once their children get older—say, around age 11 or 12. At that point, it may be the right time to start a conversation about investing. The lessons learned can not only develop the investor and entrepreneur in your child, but also the philanthropist.

Analysts anticipating a rebound in European stock markets for the last few years have been disappointed as early-year optimism faded by year-end. The European Central Bank’s aggressive monetary stimulus efforts failed to bring about the same lift in asset prices that US investors enjoyed. But now, in 2017, European stocks are handily outperforming the S&P 500 for the first time since 2012. Bullish investors point to the valuation discount of European stocks relative to the U.S. and improving economic fundamentals as reasons for the rally to continue.

How should an investor allocate across active and passive investments? It’s a challenging decision with numerous components, and for many investors, indexing has become a valuable starting point that leads to choosing to index their entire portfolio. But our analysis shows that for those who are comfortable with the characteristics of active investments, an allocation to active can also be a viable solution.