CFA Institute

What’s your healthiest habit, and why are you investing in it? For the women featured here, the answer begins with food. A sudden loss, a diagnosis, heartbreak, or family health challenges pushed nutrition from the background to the forefront. Now they cook from scratch and spend more money on high-quality groceries. They set boundaries around what they will and will not eat. These women don’t talk about diet trends. They talk about having the energy to think clearly and handle what comes next. The following excerpts from “Health is wealth: What’s your healthiest habit?” are lightly edited for clarity. Melek Gür, a health & longevity coach in Istanbul was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis at the age of 35. “This was a real wakeup call for me. After 18 years in high-stakes finance, I knew how to perform under pressure. I was disciplined, consistent, and always fit,” Gür explains. “But I was also constantly hungry — physically and mentally. I lived in gyms and offices, counted every calorie, and spent years compensating for every meal,” she admits. On paper, she was thriving. But she grew tired of chasing health through restriction and control. “That’s when I decided to create a different approach — one that works with the body, not against it.” What’s Gür’s healthiest habit today? “I never eat trash.” In Turkish culture, eating what is offered is considered polite, she explains. “But I set boundaries now and say, ‘No, I don’t eat that.” Gür has changed her diet completely and no longer eats gluten or refined sugar. “Importantly, I choose nourishment over convenience even though this comes with a price tag. Healthy food is expensive in Türkiye.” Azielia Anne, a corporate strategist at Group Maybank Islamic in Kuala Lumpur, reconnected with her passion for movement when she began her career in finance. “The long hours of the job made physical activity a much-needed outlet. In the fast-paced world of finance, where Type A personalities often dominate, health isn’t just a habit, it’s a way of life. We need to be intentional about what we eat, how we rest, and how we move.” Anne’s healthiest habit lately is prioritizing diet. That’s a challenge in the corporate environment of Kuala Lumpur, she says, where irresistible food is both affordable and everywhere. “The after-work culture often tempts one away from nutritious choices, and healthy options are both scarce and expensive.” Small efforts such as choosing better meals are part of a broader commitment to living with intention, Anne points out. “Health, clarity, and mindful choices shape what I define as a rich and fulfilling lifestyle.” Cheryl Evans, director at Milken Institute in Washington, DC, was an only child whose parents were healthy eaters. They were focused on the value of eating vegetables and a balanced diet. Evans’s mother earned a business degree and later passed the state nursing exam with the highest score. “Since she was very interested in health and science, I could ask her medical questions, and because of her influence I know a lot about health.” Her mother died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage at 67. “This got me thinking about the precariousness of life. I did a lot of looking inward and I became even more focused on fitness and nutrition.” Evans’s says her healthiest habit is being cognizant of what she eats. “I try to take note of it every day. At times, I forego eating things I like but try to maintain balance. I will eat dessert but try to do so right after a meal so that I don’t spike my blood sugar. I prepare food most days and this can be time consuming.” Evans’s notes that she spends more money on high-quality groceries and eats out less frequently than most of her friends. Montreal-based Sévrine Labelle, directrice générale at Lab Excelles et Fonds Excelles Repreneuriat, BDC Capital, was influenced by her father’s health challenges. He was diabetic, had heart surgery at age 45, and never worked afterward. Eventually, he died of colon cancer at age 67. “I was pretty sure I had bad genes, so I decided to help my odds by doing some research. When I was 39, I watched a documentary about the benefits of a whole food plant-based diet, and I decided at that time to go vegan. Exercise came a bit later in my life, but now I do yoga nearly every day, I do strength training a few times a week, and I walk a lot.” Labelle says her healthiest habit is eating a plant-rich diet with fresh organic food. “I see this as an investment. I know that an omnivore diet probably costs even more, but when I look in my refrigerator I realize I am a privileged person with all my colorful and sometimes expensive fresh food. I have the responsibility to lead some intense work projects, and my way of eating gives me the energy I need to thrive.” source

Over the past three decades, fee compression has reshaped equities and fixed income, alongside the rise of transparent, low-cost mutual fund and ETF structures. Yet alternatives, even within those same vehicles, have largely resisted similar pressure. As diversification becomes harder to achieve, the value of uncorrelated returns may help explain why. Alternatives here refer to mutual funds and ETFs pursuing strategies such as global macro, managed futures, merger arbitrage, and other long/short approaches. The data illustrate this divergence. In 1992, the median alternative mutual fund charged 1.45% per annum as an expense ratio. By 2024, the median had risen to 1.77%. This stands in contrast to the broader trend of declining fees across most other fund categories. Why has the fee reduction revolution that reshaped much of asset management largely bypassed alternatives? To explore this, we consider several possible explanations, including superior performance, changes in systematic risk, and increased co-movement among indices, each of which could justify higher fees. The evidence suggests a more structural explanation: as global diversification has declined, uncorrelated returns have become harder to find, allowing alternative strategies to sustain higher fees. Figure 1 shows median expense ratios for fixed income and large-cap equity funds, both index and active. As the data illustrate, fees have declined across these categories, while alternatives have remained elevated, reinforcing the extent to which they have resisted broader industry trends. For example, active fixed income funds charged a median expense ratio of 1.10% in 1992. By 2024, that median had declined to 0.61%. Over the same period, alternative fund fees increased. source

Why is ethical AI particularly important in financial services? Finance directly affects people’s livelihoods and economic stability. AI systems used in lending, trading, risk management, and fraud detection must be fair, transparent, and accountable because biased or opaque models can lead to discrimination, market instability, or loss of trust. Ethical AI ensures that technological innovation enhances efficiency without undermining fairness or financial integrity. What are the biggest ethical risks of AI in finance? The main risks include algorithmic bias (leading to unfair outcomes in lending or hiring), lack of transparency (black-box models that cannot be explained), data privacy violations (misuse of sensitive financial or personal data), and systemic risks (AI-driven trading or decision-making amplifying volatility). Without safeguards, these risks can erode trust, trigger regulatory penalties, and damage firms’ reputations. How can financial institutions implement ethical AI in practice? Use diverse datasets and apply bias mitigation techniques. Adopt XAI to clarify model outputs. Strengthen data governance and cybersecurity to protect sensitive information. Maintain human oversight in high-stakes decisions. Conduct regular audits and engage proactively with regulators. These steps embed ethical principles into day-to-day operations and reduce long-term risks. What role should regulators play in shaping ethical AI adoption? Regulators must provide risk-based frameworks (e.g., EU AI Act), ensure AI literacy among supervisors, and promote early engagement with firms on standards, reporting, and audits. They should also foster international coordination to harmonize rules, reduce regulatory arbitrage, and strengthen global financial stability. By setting clear expectations, regulators help balance innovation with accountability. source

Unsupervised learning techniques can be introduced incrementally. Clustering can enhance asset grouping in portfolio construction or signal classification; anomaly detection can complement existing risk monitoring systems; and dimensionality reduction methods, such as PCA, can improve model interpretability or data preprocessing. Crucially, they can augment rather than replace existing models, making integration more feasible and less disruptive. For investment practitioners, these methods enable tasks including regime detection, portfolio diversification, signal classification, and anomaly detection by revealing complex relationships and latent factors often invisible to traditional approaches. This chapter begins by introducing clustering methods including k-means, spectral clustering, and hierarchical clustering, highlighting their use in grouping assets, detecting market regimes, and constructing diversified portfolios. Notable use cases include De Prado’s Hierarchical Risk Parity framework and applications of spectral clustering for macro regime classification. The chapter then discusses dimensionality reduction techniques such as PCA, t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE), and ICA as methods for simplifying high-dimensional datasets.  source

Asset classes do not move independently; their behavior reflects the prevailing phase of the global cycle. Across phases, both return potential and the way each exposure transmits risk within a portfolio change. As growth and inflation momentum evolve, so do volatility patterns, correlations, and drawdown characteristics. Early in the cycle, risk assets may act as recovery engines. As the cycle matures, those same exposures can become sources of instability. Duration can shift from a performance drag during reflation to a stabilizer as growth slows. Credit may transition from carry engine to spread risk. Commodities and high-beta assets often lose diversification benefits once the cyclical momentum peaks. The key insight is that exposures cannot be assumed to behave consistently over time. Their portfolio role changes as macro conditions change. Historical cycle patterns do not provide certainty, but they offer a probabilistic framework for assessing whether current risks are aligned with the prevailing environment. Practitioner Tip: Rather than focusing solely on expected returns, professionals should regularly reassess how each exposure contributes to portfolio volatility, correlation, and drawdown risk as the cycle evolves and adjust when those relationships begin to shift. source