Strategy How Smart is ‘Smart Beta’ Investing?
Investors increasingly embrace “smart beta” investing, by which we mean passively following an index in which stock weights are not proportional to their market capitalizations, but based on some alternative weighting scheme. Examples include fundamentally-weighted indices (...)
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Pedagogy iSTOXX™ Europe Minimum Variance
The approach initiated by Ossiam’s research and management team intends to obtain an optimized portfolio that includes a selection of stocks where volatility is among the lowest in the investment universe
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Opinion Psychology and smart beta
‘Smart beta’ sounds like an oxymoron. How smart can it be to continue using the same strategy in such fickle markets? A portfolio manager calling on all his skills (‘alpha’) in analysing market environments (the source of ‘beta’) should be able to outperform an unchanged (...)
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Note Diversity wins : Persistent investor interest in smart beta, particularly within diversifying strategies
Willis Towers Watson’s institutional investment clients globally allocated $10bn, via 175 selections, to diversifying investment strategies in 2015. Within this grouping, liquid alternatives attracted the most interest with over $8.1bn, of which approximately half is in smart (...)
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Strategy Risk factors: taking risk budgeting one step further
An increasing number of pension funds are opting to invest in ‘alternative’ or ‘smart beta’ indices to supplement their passive management activities. Several competing methods currently exist, each with their own objectives. Analysing the risk contribution of each factor by (...)
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Opinion Smart Betas offer a new approach to bridge market bias
When Alan Greenspan spoke of "market exuberance" (i.e. the lightning-fast mood swings from optimism to an investment bubble popping) wasn’t he referring to what we could call a "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" syndrome?
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Note Building Minimum Variance Portfolios with low risk, low drawdowns and strong returns
This paper provides an introduction to the STOXX Minimum Variance Indices and aims to achieve three things : i) an overview of minimum variance investing ii) the methodology for the construction and maintenance of the STOXX Minimum Variance Indices, highlighting the unique (...)
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Strategy Why is smart beta a true revolution?
So what is “smart beta”? A mere revolt against traditional indices? No, Sir, it’s a true revolution – the factor investing revolution. The questioning of allegiance to traditional indices, which until now were used broadly despite some serious drawbacks, has only just begun, but (...)
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Opinion Combining Active and Passive management in a Portfolio
In recent years, long-held ideas on portfolio construction have been called into question. Investors can now choose from a range of “smart beta” strategies, offering exposure to market risk premia in a systematic, transparent fashion. Where does the dividing line between (...)
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Strategy Invest with “style” and outperform
Investment « styles » aim to capture risk premia and/or market anomalies that can be seen structurally over long periods. While no formal classification exists, a distinction is traditionally made between four major style families, not only applicable to equities but also to (...)
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News European Smart Beta ETF market flows accelerated in Q1 2017 at EUR1.8bn.
Total Assets under Management are up 11% vs. the end of 2016, reaching EUR 31.8 billion and including a positive market impact (+4.2%). Net New Assets into Smart Beta ETFs have already reached a quarter of the record high EUR7bn figure reached in (...)
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Strategy How does ‘quantamental’ fit with factor investing?
‘Quantamental’ is a relatively new portmanteau word in asset management lingo. Its creation is indicative of a trend in our industry. Quantamental is the fruit of the marriage of the quantitative and fundamental (also known as judgmental) disciplines in managing (...)
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Innovation State Street Global Advisors Launches Four Advanced Beta Equity ETFs
State Street Global Advisors, the asset management arm of State Street Corporation, announced the launch of four advanced beta equity exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The SPDR MSCI Europe Value Weighted UCITS ETF, SPDR MSCI USA Value Weighted UCITS ETF, SPDR MSCI Europe Small (...)
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Strategy The four cardinal “smart beta” virtues, or how to use Plato as an investment philosophy
Etienne Vincent, head of THEAM’s global quantitative management, explains how the four main recurring sources of outperformance in the equity markets, extensively developed in the “smart beta” concept, can be likened to the four cardinal virtues described by Plato, the Greek (...)
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Innovation State Street Global Advisors Launches Multi-Factor Global Equity Fund
Today’s launch represents one of the industry’s first UCITS advanced beta multi-factor funds combining three factors: low valuation, low volatility and high quality. All three strategies demonstrate increased risk-adjusted returns over a long-term investment horizon when (...)
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