Portfolio Construction
| 23 February 2010
This new research from the Pensions Institute at the Cass Business School studies the effect of decentralised investment management, including the use of multiple competing managers in specialist asset classes, on the risk and performance of pension funds.
| 17 November 2009
In this paper Joop Huij from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and Jeroen Derwall from Tilburg University, School of Economics show the observed relation between portfolio concentration and performance is mostly driven by the breadth of the underlying fund strategies, not just by fund managers’ willingness to take big bets.
| 11 November 2009
The events of the last two years have demonstrated that risk management cannot afford to stop at the 95th percentile, and that risk management based solely on volatility is not sufficient. This research paper by Tim Unger, head of investment strategy at Watson Wyatt Australia and member of the global Thinking Ahead Group, considers 15 unlikely, but potentially high impact events - such as the demise of capitalism - their effect on investments and possible hedging strategies.
| 28 October 2009
Notwithstanding the effect, for investors, of globalisation, country and sector bets still drive the performance of global equity portfolios. And research shows that whole countries tend to stray from fair value for a lot longer than individual stocks do. Deutsche Asset Management has produced a paper on ‘Diversification-Based Investing’, which leads one to think about building a core balanced portfolio of country and sector index funds.
| 08 September 2009
The structural changes in the fixed income market mean corporate
credit may be the single most important factor in generating risk-adjusted
performance in fixed income, according to Janus.
| 28 July 2009
The inherent breadth and ambiguity of environmental, social and governance issues has resulted in the integration of ESG considerations into portfolio design remaining largely a philosophical push, without clarity on the direct and indirect impacts on shareholder value. In this working paper, AQR Capital Management's Jeff Dunn, outlines a simple framework for considering the impact of ESG issues with respect to their role in investment decisions, with the aim of providing a clearer path for further investigation of the impact of ESG policies on shareholder value and how they can be appropriately included in the investment decisions of both investors and fiduciaries.
| 28 July 2009
For the first time since 2006, Watson Wyatt has written a report that revisits the macro-economic factors that may affect global returns over the next decade. It highlights the increasing influence of public policy and emerging wealth on the investment agenda, and draws some tentative conclusions regarding the implications for investment portfolios.
| 20 May 2009
In this latest piece of research the US-based independent investment consulting firm, NEPC, examines whether the assumptions about hedge funds, hedge fund of funds and portable alpha, are broken or merely damaged, and whether there is still a case for including these strategies in institutional investment programs.
