Firms have struggled to find the additional workers to expand their activities – that is what they tell us. In short, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there has been genuine pressure on prices, caused not just by temporary supply shortfalls in a few areas, even though there have been some of those, but also by persistent strength in demand.
Moreover, we now observe very active participation of various hedge funds, proprietary trading desks of banks, broker-dealers and trading units of large non-financial enterprises. Accordingly, investment and trading strategies have also become more diverse. In particular, let me focus on the changing nature of index investment.