White papers and reports exploring quantitative investment and investment tools. Research for quant managers and analysts in this section covers academic papers on portfolio optimisation, articles on trading strategies for model-driven alpha creation, managing index funds, papers on derivatives pricing, and articles on performance attribution analysis. The "tools" component of this section refers to investment tools which help portfolio managers to do their job. For instance, ETFs may be considered a "tool" to make a short term allocation to specific asset class or strategy. Investment technology is a "tool" used throughout the investment process. This heading includes research on alpha creation, including: quantitative approaches to asset allocation and investment technology, Big Data, and the role of technology within asset management. For lists of white papers on specific quant topics - such as index investing, derivatives pricing, attribution analysis or trading models for alpha generation - please use the search menu at the top or click on the appropriate selection in the topic menu.
The “Monkey portfolio” proposition is that smart beta strategies can be deployed naively, with the assurance that all such strategies will add value. EDHEC's research suggests otherwise, with many smart beta strategies having exposure to other factors. The authors warn that care is needed to avoid over-extrapolating the implications of a particular test ...
The correlation between equity and bond markets is of vital importance to asset allocators; for risk control and portfolio construction, for assessing the market outlook, and for building models of how markets work (equity market valuation models, for example). In this 6-page paper, Nuno Luis and David Caplan of BlackRock examine the history of the equity/bond ...
The business of investment management will change significantly in the years ahead. Demographic and regulatory trends have imposed gradual change upon the industry, but technological developments are now injecting more urgency into the pace of change. In this white paper, Robeco examines the forces that are driving change, and how this will transform the industry. The authors ...
Multi-factor models are commonly used for risk analysis and performance attribution of equity portfolios. Equity portfolio managers are interested not only in assessing the impact of common factors, but also in understanding the impact of stock-specific attributes upon portfolio risk and performances. In this report, EDHEC-Risk Institute explores the challenge of consistent risk ...
Authored by Cliff Asness and others from AQR Capital, this paper examines the "myths" surrounding momentum investing, using results from a variety of academic studies. The paper aims to clarify the facts with regard to the efficacy of trend-following strategies and to document the practical value of momentum within the investment process.
There is growing agreement that Blockchain technology, though overhyped, is here to stay. This excellent report from Robeco explains the distributed ledger technology, transaction flows and the eco-system. It then examines the ways in which it might transform the asset management industry in the future.
In this paper, Professor Aswath Damodaran examines ways of estimating equity risk premiums (ERP). He begins by considering the economic determinants of ERP, including information uncertainty, perceptions of macroeconomic risk and risk aversion by investors. This is the 9th edition of this paper. It has been produced annually since the global financial crisis of 2008.
Typically, institutional investors around the world pursue one of four investment goals: absolute return, liability-driven investment, total return or principal protection. Generally, they choose from four different investment approaches: static tilts, traditional active management, market-capitalization exposures and alternative investments. Given the aforementioned potential ...
This paper demonstrates that for investment professionals and investors, true success lies beyond the industry's traditionally accepted norms, including not only the production of alpha, but more importantly, helping investors reach their long-term goals sustainably.
This influential paper is Mebane Faber's update to his 2006 version. It incorporates new data from the period 2008-2012. The paper investigates how well the original work has held up since publication. Faber finds that overall, the models achieve equity-like returns with bond-like volatility and drawdowns, which was his original thesis in the 2006 paper. He also examines the ...
The iSTOXX Europe Market Neutral Single and Multi-Factor Indices developed by STOXX in collaboration with Alpha Centauri offers investors a unique and very innovative way to target and capture premia of six well-documented sources of systematic risk: value, carry, momentum, size, low risk as well as quality.
Asset owners face a challenge in determining how the factor allocation fits into the overall equity program: How does the factor allocation relate to the existing roster of active managers? This paper uses a risk budgeting framework to investigate how active mandates and factor allocations can be combined. Risk budgeting connects the manager selection process with the factor ...
In a world where alpha can seem scarce, active small-cap managers continue to outperform their benchmarks in an impressive way. But why? Investors have a general sense small caps are riskier and less efficient, but how these characteristics contribute to more alpha opportunities remains unclear. At QMA, we think it’s critical to understand the sources of returns so that you ...
This paper appeared in CFA Institute's Financial Analysts Journal. Combining long-only-constrained factor subportfolios is generally not a mean–variance-efficient way to capture expected factor returns. For example, a combination of four fully invested factor subportfolios—low beta, small size, value, and momentum—captures less than half ...
This paper analyses what academic research has to say on equity factors. Our objective is to understand which lessons we can learn from such research in terms of designing and evaluating factor indices. When analysing academic publications on equity factor investing, five important lessons emerge, which provide useful perspective on practical questions about factor indices. This ...
This report by S&P Dow Jones takes an in-depth look at how indices are changing the face of investing. Specifically, it examines whether passive investing can grow too large and what the possible implications of this are for active management.
This EDHEC paper examines the importance of robustness for smart beta strategies, explaining how a strategy being "relatively robust" differs from "absolute robustness". The authors describe how the robustness of smart beta performance can be assessed and quantified, describing various approaches, which may be used to improve the robustness of smart beta ...
Illiquidity risk is a potentially appealing means of generating additional yields in a low-return world. The authors of this 10-page document discuss three different dimensions of illiquidity risk premium that investors should demand for a given asset.
The authors of this very interesting paper discuss why considering diversification and risk independently may help investors build more efficient portfolios. They argue that asset allocators should rethink the impact of low volatility diversifiers in higher risk portfolios. Some low vol asset classes (e.g. hedge funds) may primarily have a “de-risking” impact, but not a ...
This paper by Segal Rogerscasey examines the ongoing debate between active and passive management, highlighting the pros and cons of both strategies. How can institutional investors calculate the probability that active or passive strategies will outperform, and how do they decide which approach is best for their situation?
