Jim O'Neill, Columnist

Will the Calm in Global Markets Last?

Tranquil markets present certain challenges: staying awake, justifying your pay and saying when volatility will come back.

August 19, 2014 at 3:37 PM UTC

By Jim O'Neill

Jim O'Neill worked for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. from 1995 until 2013, serving most recently as chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and as the firm's chief economist from 2001 to 2011. Before joining Goldman Sachs, he was head of global research at Swiss Bank Corp. O'Neill is the creator of the BRIC acronym, which was derived from his thesis that Brazil, Russia, India and China would dominate growth in emerging markets. He is a member of the boards of the Brussels-based policy-research centers Itinera Institute and Bruegel. He earned a degree in economics from Sheffield University in 1978 and a doctorate from the University of Surrey in 1982. He lives in London.

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Talk about a summer lull. I worked in finance for the best part of 30 years, and I can't remember a period quite like this. Such a peculiar calm presents certain challenges. I'm almost glad not to be more actively involved.

To begin with, coping with the tedium isn't easy. Then there's the problem of generating returns from minuscule price movements. Justifying your pay is harder, too -- especially for hedge-fund types, whose 2-and-20 model makes sense when prices are surging up and down but not when equities, commodities, and foreign exchange and interest rates are all pretty flat.