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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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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Strategy Risk factor investing explained
Risk factor investing is growing in popularity, but there’s a risk of getting lost in the factor “zoo”. In this Expert Opinion Thierry Roncalli, Head of Quantitative Research at Lyxor Asset Management, explains the concept of risk factors and distinguishes between facts and (...)
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Innovation Solactive launches Stable Income Europe Index
The index targets investors interested in a smart beta concept that puts more emphasis on the role played by free cash flow yield, aside from tilting composition towards high dividend and low volatility shares. Specifically, free cash flows are typically used to provide an (...)
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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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Interview Caroline Le Meaux Lambert : « We are looking for strategies able to benefit from upward equity trends while limiting volatility »
Caroline Le Meaux Lambert, head of delegated asset management at Caisse des Dépôts for the French public pension fund Ircantec, tells us a little more about the Smart Beta concept.
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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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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 Low volatility, the hidden factor
Robert Haugen, who discovered the low-volatility anomaly in 1972, wrote numerous articles and books to try to popularise what he called the ‘hidden factor’. To some extent, it was only the advent of smart beta investment strategies that turned his dream into reality, as low (...)
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Strategy Quality, the positive factor
Quality is positive: it is about good companies that are efficient at managing their businesses profitably, creating shareholder value and being rewarded with above average returns. Yet, quality is not always easy to recognise or measure. Here are a few pointers for avoiding (...)
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Innovation Lombard Odier Investment Managers and ETF Securities join forces to offer fundamental fixed income exchange traded funds
Lombard Odier Investment Managers (“Lombard Odier IM”), a pioneer in smart beta fixed income investing, and ETF Securities, one of the world’s leading innovators of exchange traded products (“ETPs”), have partnered to offer a range of transparent, cost-effective and (...)
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Innovation Invesco launches high-dividend, low-volatility ETFs
According to Invesco, Canadian investors are increasingly seeking income from their holdings but they may be concerned about the relatively limited opportunities within the domestic equity market. Foreign equity markets may provide greater (...)
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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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Innovation Solactive expands family of USD High Yield Corporates Indices used as the basis for three new Xtrackers ETFs
Solactive is adding three new indices to its family of high yield corporate bond indices, which have been developed as the basis for three new Xtrackers ETFs issued this week and trading on the NYSE.
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Note EDHEC-Risk Institute publication shows that smart beta risks can be controlled while benefitting from smart beta performance
A new EDHEC-Risk Institute publication entitled “Risk Allocation, Factor Investing and Smart Beta: Reconciling Innovations in Equity Portfolio Construction,” drawn from the Amundi ETF & Indexing research chair at EDHEC-Risk Institute on “ETF and Passive Investment (...)
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