ESG Materiality, H1 2023

Spotlight on India
Overlooked and underappreciated: The case for Korea

At the end of May 2023, the Federated Hermes Asia ex-Japan Strategy’s key country active overweight remains Korea, at +13.96% relative to benchmark, whereas the strategy’s main underweight is India, sitting at 16.83% below the benchmark, as shown by Figure 1 below.1 We prefer Korean stocks because they currently present very cheap valuations amid improving […]
A forced hand

market snapshot
Beyond re-opening: the long-term trends to watch in China

Optimism that China’s scrapping of its strict zero-Covid controls would boost the global economy has been tempered by weaker-than-expected data in May on retail sales, industrial output, and investments. But this short-term blip needs to be viewed in the context of the vast technological and demographic shifts underway in the world’s second largest economy that […]
Crouching tiger: the contrarian case for China

Following the end of zero-Covid, China is in the midst of a U-shaped rather than V-shaped recovery, which has been quite uneven across various sectors. Electric vehicle (EV) sales as percentage of new auto sales in China increased to 35% in 2022 and China is now a net exporter of cars. The Chinese EV sector […]
Meet the Manager: Nachu Chockalingam

What’s your role at Federated Hermes? I work as a portfolio manager in our Credit team, with a particular focus on our sustainability-themed strategies. How did you get started in your career? Somewhat oddly, I think I knew I wanted to work in finance from a pretty young age but didn’t really know what area […]
On the road again

market snapshot
Investors size up far-reaching implications of AI boom

market snapshot
Putting the ‘investment’ in investment grade credit

Why now? Yields are at decade highs: Yields, which sit at almost 5% for the global investment grade market, are looking very attractive. Historically, and looking at the past decade in particular, yields are now at the highest level seen for the investment grade market, as demonstrated in Figure 1 below. This indicates that a […]
What gives, corporate hybrids?

Chartology