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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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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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 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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Strategy Does a liquidity factor premium exist in the stock market?
Academic studies present ample evidence in support of the existence of four factor premiums in stock markets: Low Risk, Value, Momentum, and Quality. Factor investing puts these concepts into practice by enabling investors to allocate their capital explicitly to these (...)
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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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Opinion When Smart Is Not That Smart
Can Beta Become Smarter? Nobel Prize-winning economist William Sharpe introduced the notions of “beta” and “alpha” decades ago. Put simply, Sharpe defined beta as a measure of a portfolio’s sensitivity relative to the market. Under this definition, it is difficult to fathom how (...)
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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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Strategy A smart approach of Index Management
Two years ago, Ossiam entered the European market with ETFs based on two innovative investment strategies offering an alternative to traditional equity market cap-weighted indices: The Ossiam Equal Weight ETFs and The Ossiam Minimum Variance ETFs. Back to smart beta concept (...)
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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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Pedagogy BNP Paribas L1 Equity World Low Volatility
The Fund BNP Paribas L1 Equity World Low Volatility seeks to outperform the MSCI World Index over a full market cycle with risk reduction objective and limiting tracking error risk level. Absolute volatility is targeted to be lower than the MSCI World (...)
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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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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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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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Strategy Controling investment risk in commodities investment
Commodities exhibit unique characteristics including low correlations with bonds and equities and inflation-hedging abilities. These have made commodities an attractive addition to diversified portfolios and have generated growing interest in commodity (...)
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