Investing Ideas

Goldman Call on ESG Debt Paves Way for a Hedge Fund’s Big Short

Credit strategists at Goldman Sachs pointed out that the long-standing premium on debt targeting environmental, social and governance goals had been consigned to history.

Credit strategists at Goldman Sachs pointed out that the long-standing premium on debt targeting environmental, social and governance goals had been consigned to history. Their pronouncement, limited to the point of issuance, also carried over to secondary markets, creating a rare opportunity for investors.

The idea at the moment is to short conventional bonds and go long their green equivalents. The price differentials are small, but if the bets are big enough, profits can be considerable. You couldn’t really do that pre-2022 because green bonds were expensive. Now there is much more pricing tension coming into the market.

The Goldman analysts, Michael Puempel and Lotfi Karoui, estimated that when controlling for factors like industry, rating and maturity alongside the macro backdrop across time, there’s no longer any difference in funding costs between conventional debt and bonds linked to ESG goals.

International

Indian RBI May Go in for 25 b.p. Interest Rate Hike in Monetary Policy Meeting Next Month

With retail inflation remaining above the comfort level of 6 per cent and most global peers including US Fed continuing hawkish stance, the Reserve Bank of India too may go in for a 25 basis points hike in the bi-monthly monetary policy to be announced on April 6, opined experts.

U.S. Economy

JPMorgan Says U.S. is Probably Headed for Recession as Economic ‘Engines about to Turn Off’.

A series of banking crises this month headlined by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank has forced analysts from multiple banks, including JPMorgan Chase, to rewrite their recession forecasts from scratch,