Security selection beats allocation in return stakes

Can large sophisticated investors beat the market? And possibly more insightfully, how do they beat the market? These questions are explored in a recent ICPM research paper – asset allocation and performance of pension funds. Amanda White spoke to one of the authors, Aleksandar Andonov from Maastricht University.

Mercer, Callan courtship augurs more engagements

The recent alliance between Mercer Investment Consulting and Callan Associates to acquire the bulk of Evaluation Associates – the investment consulting arm of Milliman Inc – could be the start of a cooperation that targets other potentially attractive acquisitions in the US industry.

Eigenfactor adjusted covariance matrices

This paper investigates the underlying sources for the biases of optimised portfolios, and identifies special portfolios, termed eigenfactors, that exhibit large systematic biases in the risk forecasts. It shows that the covariance matrix can be adjusted to remove these biases, and that removing eigenfactor biases essentially removes the optimised portfolio biases as well.