Bloomberg offers Islamic finance platform

[Andy Nguyen]

Data vendor Bloomberg has launched the Bloomberg Islamic Finance Platform (ISLM), a new service designed to maximise investment performance for firms involved in Sharia-compliant trading.

Bloomberg ISLM offers: relevant news coverage; structured diagrams of financial instruments; screening of over 35,000 Sharia-compliant stocks; a database of more than 500 Islamic funds; credit ratings and searchable data on Islamic loans; a listing of more than 70 Islamic banks and; profiles on all prominent Islamic institutions and regulators.

The new service also includes an Islamic community database that provides details of more than 250 Sharia scholars with details on which sukuk they have rated, boards they represent and their fatwa endorsements.

Bloomberg also launched a Malaysian ringgit (MYR) sukuk index in cooperation with the Association of Islamic Banking Institutions in Malaysia, to provide a benchmark for MYR sovereign sukuk investments.

“Islamic products and services present feasible and competitive alternatives to conventional methods of investment,” said Sheikh Mohd Daud Bakar, managing director, Amanie Islamic Finance Consultancy and Education. “They are increasingly popular as financing and investment tools.”

Bloomberg currently provides news services and information through 146 bureaus in 72 countries.

http://www.thetradenews.com/operations-technology/trading-tools/5794

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

This is great news. Islamic finance is a fast growing area. Good to see Bloomberg getting on board!

 

[euroazn]

Hi, sorry for my cluelessness, what is Islamic Finance? I.e what makes some securities compliant and others not? This is actually the first time I heard about this and I'm actually pretty curious...!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

This is where wikipedia comes in handy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_finance

 

[euroazn]

Let me get this straight: there's no interest applied!?!?!??!?

 

[bigbadwolf]

Let me get this straight: there's no interest applied!?!?!??!?

No, they use euphemisms like "profit-sharing." The idea (as I undertand it) is that the investor also takes some of the risks, so perhaps it's not an euphemism for interest. Unlike a loan in the Western systems, where there is only "usury" (i.e., interest). There's no "risk-free interest rate" as it's considered usury. Anyway, that's the way I understand it.

 

[euroazn]

I see - in other words, it's a complete market, with the exception of the risk free instrument. Thanks bbw.

I propose that we dedicate an entire quantnet subforum to figure out a way to exploit this. :p

 

[bigbadwolf]

I see - in other words, it's a complete market, with the exception of the risk free instrument. Thanks bbw.

I propose that we dedicate an entire quantnet subforum to figure out a way to exploit this. :p

I've heard people talking about it for the last twenty years but this is all I've been able to glean. Dominic probably knows some people involved in this (like Riaz) so he may be able to shed some light on it. Islam as the ideology of primitive accumulation, of mercantile capitalism, with a cursory nod towards social justice (zakat and so on).

 

[DominiConnor]

The idea that interest is a social evil is far from unique to Islam, until the Catholic church realised it could make serious money from usury, it was forbidden to Christians, since the Jesus myths include him physically attacking people who made money purely from money, the only violent act he is said to have committed.

However, as a headhunter, my advice is to avoid Sharia finance as a career. If you want to observe it in your own life then fine, but you have to decide how much you really want to do this.

An iron rule I have as a headhunter is never ever to tell people what they should want. My job is to find out what they want, and try and get it for them, perhaps suggesting there's other things they might want to look at as well.

I'm neutral on whether Sharia will grow as a % of the industry as a whole, and am quite happy to go along with those who say it will continue to show the increase we've seen in recent years.

I don't care about that.
I do care that the supply and demand for staff is horrible.

Most people here are choosing the areas they'd like to be in based upon their skills, their estimate of how well they think that sector will behave, and with just a touch of "I'd really like to do this stuff even if they pay me a bit less".

Islamic finance has a far higher level of people who want to do it because it's something they want to do. often they are well educated, and although P&D's database does not record your religion, it's no secret that we know a lot of smart people called Mohammed. Many of them has expressly said to me that they want to do this, you are competing with them. BBW mentioned Riaz, who has a PhD in applied maths from Oxford and was picked personally by Paul Wilmott as being good at this stuff. You're competing with people like that. You feeling lucky ?

Also some Sharia work is shit dull, just like any other kind of business. Barack Obama's office is cleaned by someone, and I'd bet that although they have a gold plated security clearance, and see the great man occasionally, they are forbidden to talk to him on pain of being fired, and get paid very little.

If you're way smarter than the average in this game and really want to do it and prepared to work for considerably less than you'd get otherwise then go ahead, but in some ways Sharia finance is like being an actor.

Some people like acting, that's their thing.
For some reason they seem to think that this should be their career. Fact is that actors spend almost none of their lives actually acting. That applies even to colossal stars like George Clooney, Kate Winslett, or Russel Crowe. The only people who get to act the majority of the time are the vanishingly small % who hook the lead in long term soap opera. If you're averagely successful you may go literally years without actually doing any acting and then being the "3rd shouting man" in the credits for a mediocre film.
A few years ago, a friend took his office out for drinks and I got dragged along, and I got talking to a woman, who I knew I had worked with and talked to her about people we both knew, whilst a background process in my head tried to remember her name.

After a while she asked me who I was, since I was talking to her as if we knew each other.

Turned out that she'd been on the TV so much in 2nd/3rd tier roles that she'd entered my subconscious as someone I knew, but not enough that I'd recognize her as an actor, rather than as the receptionist she currently was. That was why I couldn't remember her name. She was still more successful than 95% of actors.

So if you like the act of acting and you'd be better off getting a job with short hours that let you do amateur dramatics every night.

You may, or may not choose this as a framework for working out career options whose utility to you goes beyond the money.

 

[bigbadwolf]

BBW mentioned Riaz, who has a PhD in applied maths from Oxford and was picked personally by Paul Wilmott as being good at this stuff.

From UCL.

 

[DominiConnor]

I stand corrected, but he's still a smart guy.