Credit ratings are one of the important measures for bond investors since these ratings are assessments of the creditworthiness of a borrower, such as a corporation, government, or a specific financial instrument like a bond. These ratings are assigned by privately owned credit rating agencies such as S&P Global, Moody’s, Fitch Ratings, or Scope. They indicate the likelihood that the issuer will meet its debt obligations (interest and principal payments) in full and on time. As a result, credit ratings help investors evaluate default risk, guide interest rates, and influence borrowing costs for bond issuers. More generally speaking, ratings range

Admittedly, the title to this article may be a pun too far. However, in this post, we’ll show you where you could have found signs of potential distress within rental car company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (HTZ.N), well before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 26. The analytics presented in this report come from Refinitiv’s suite of StarMine quant models. As shown in Exhibit 1, the Eikon widget that sorts StarMine models into bullish and bearish categories show many bearish indicators for Hertz and not a single bullish one. StarMine models fall into two categories – alpha

The S&P Dow Jones SPIVA Scorecards are out again. Bunker down the active fund groups, and brace yourselves for the rush of opprobrium you will undoubtedly endure. Be ready for the impending broadside fired by the anti-active brigade targeting your failed objectives and unjustified fee structures. Active groups turn the other cheek Indeed, the narrative in financial and social media since the scorecard came out has been unsurprisingly negative. Yet what will we hear from those who are most heinously indicted in this report? Not much, I suspect. There appears to be little appetite for active fund groups to advocate any

Click here to view the dashboard in detail. Aggregate Estimates and Revisions Third quarter earnings are expected to increase 3.0% from Q3 2015. Excluding the energy sector, the earnings growth estimate improves to 6.7%. Of the 290 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date for Q3 2016, 72.8% have reported earnings above analyst expectations. This is above the long-term average of 64% and above the average over the past four quarters of 70%. The Q3 2016 blended revenue growth estimate is 2.5%. Excluding the energy sector, the revenue growth estimate increases to 4.4%. 56% of companies have reported Q3 2016 revenue

Jake Moeller argues that the benefits of the active funds industry need to be articulated more strongly by its exponents. The active versus passive fund debate evokes considerable passion among investors and analysts alike. If you type the topic into an Internet search engine, you can find yourself surfing for many hours garnering interesting views and opinions on the subject, ranging from serious and controlled academic studies to more anecdotal takes. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the subject also gets a lot of coverage in social media, with performance data and news items often commented on and redistributed with as much gusto

The jobs report announced on March 4, 2016 proved to be surprising for many. The S&P 500, which was introduced on that date in 1957, seemed unclear on how best to respond to it. The U.S. economy added an extra 242,000 jobs, with unemployment remaining at 4.9%. The U.S. is now close to its natural rate of unemployment of 4.8%, a proxy for full employment, although the labor force participation rate is at 62.9% compared with its peak in 2000 of 67.3%. The surprising statistic, though, was that despite the low level of unemployment, the rate of annualized nominal wage