The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has left the world facing another energy crisis and warning bells of a global recession are growing increasingly shrill. Ostensibly, the crisis could also push the energy transition back as governments and companies scramble to shoulder the cost of $100 per barrel of oil and prepare for higher
Already OPTrust’s portfolio can best be described as resilient. But CIO James Davis, who started his career in October 1987, expects global macro economic changes from this crisis that we have never seen before and he wants to position the portfolio for whatever is around the corner.
In this Fiduciary Investors series podcast Amanda White talks to Ben Meng, chief investment officer of CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the United States. Meng, who oversees an investment office of nearly 400 employees and manages investment portfolios of roughly $400 billion, talks about the fund’s plan to achieve its 7 per return target - including the use of leverage – the liquidity management of the fund and how it could deploy capital during the crisis, and the inflation.
Looking back at the portfolios of large institutional investors during and after the dot.com crash and the GFC, CEM Benchmarking, reveals commonality in the portfolios that thrived. For both events the top quartile returns were more than 2 per cent higher than the bottom quartile. Analysing the asset allocation and behaviour of investors showed two clear themes: top quartile performers had more defensive allocations pre-crash; and rebalancing is a tailwind for performance.
The Harvard endowment is about half way through its transition to external investment management and will work with its service providers to implement the university’s new directive, to position the portfolio in line with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
A risk management strategy that measures resilience and fragility of markets, protected portfolios from the wild February downswing in equity markets, and predicts more fragility to come.
COVID-19 lockdowns have highlighted the risks in infrastructure, that have been there all along. The realisation that infrastructure assets represent significant risk exposures, that should be understood and managed, will determine the coming of age of the infrastructure asset class.
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