The power of engagement

It is called the “CalPERS’ Effect” but it could easily be called the asset owner effect, or the institutional investor effect, or the power of engagement effect. Wilshire, which is a consultant to the $300 billion Californian fund CalPERS, has provided an update on its study measuring the effect of engagement on a targeted list of companies called the Focus List.

Quality factor explained by profitability: Robert Novy-Marx

Among academic classifications, and the subsequent implementation of factor investing, “quality” is one of the newer areas of investigation. Robert Novy-Marx, the Lori and Alan S. Zekelman Professor of Finance at the University of Rochester, is leading the charge on the academic justification of quality as a factor, although he has a “jaded scepticism” about … Read more

Low turnover: a virtue of low volatility

Trading is necessary to follow an active strategy, but excessive trading is linked to human behavior. In his new paper just published on SSRN Pim van Vliet looked into why investors trade and how much trading is needed for an effective low-volatility strategy. For potential low-volatility investors the question arises: is turnover a good or … Read more

How to allocate assets to combat climate risk

  Mercer’s extensive climate change report, launched today, gives investors a practical framework for monitoring and managing climate risk, shifting the discussion from philosophical agreement to practical investment implementation.   In Investing in a time of climate change Mercer outlines extensive dynamic investment modelling that analyses changes in the return expectations of assets between 2015 … Read more

Behind Norway’s coal divestment

The Norwegian Parliament’s finance committee recommendations to direct the Government Pension Fund Global to divest from companies that generate more than 30 per cent of their output or revenue from coal-related activities, is the evolution of a climate-related investment strategy that dates back to 2010. Amanda White explores the raft of tools the fund uses … Read more