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Research

Measuring manager performance expectations

Institutional investors do not act on their own expectations when choosing fund managers, rather their reliance on consultants, and past performance, exacerbates the agency problem in the institutional investment supply chain a new study from Oxford University shows. Using survey data for 1999-2011 the academics analyse the views of plan sponsors on their asset managers, […]
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Beauty and the beast of low-volatility investing

Usually focusing on how to design the best low-volatility strategy, David Blitz, Matthias Hanauer and Pim van Vliet have set out to construct a very bad low-volatility strategy. Comparing good and bad low-volatility strategies they found very different performance characteristics. Clearly, not all low-volatility stocks are created equal. The results highlight the importance of being […]
Uncategorised posts

AustralianSuper contemplates foreign outposts

Australia’s largest superannuation fund, AustralianSuper, is considering whether it should have its own investment management and currency hedging teams based in Europe and America. Due to the mandatory nature of the system in Australia, the current rate of funds under management growth means assets are doubling every four to five years. Peter Curtis, head of […]
Uncategorised posts

Stanford dumps coal: why divestment doesn’t work

The decision by the Stanford University endowment to divest from coal stocks might produce some positive PR, but from an investment perspective it’s only making them worse off, says Andrew Ang, professor of finance at Columbia University, who says the move prompts the bigger question of what the purpose of a university endowment actually is. […]
Research

The predictive power of portfolio characteristics

Investors still rely, to a great extent, on past performance to assess managers’ future performance. Rather than rely on past performance outcomes to predict future results, a new paper, The predictive power of portfolio characteristics, argues that it is possible to improve the ability to predict future long-term success by identifying and measuring selected portfolio characteristics […]
Editorial

Does pay for performance work?

Governance experts say that paying competitive salaries for internal staff will have benefits across the entire fund. For some, including those working in public sector pension funds or profit-to-member funds, that is unpalatable. But a comparison of salaries and total investment costs, between two large, different and high profile funds – Ontario Teachers and CalPERS […]
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