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Adding value through risk allocations

2013 was a great year to add value by using risk to assign asset allocation, according to chief investment officer of Windham Capital, Lucas Turton, whose fund added 300 basis points above benchmark last year by dynamically allocating according to risk.   Windham Capital Management’s style is to focus on measuring and understanding risk to […]
Amanda WhiteFebruary 19, 2014
Uncategorised posts

Merton’s message: give up on alpha

Nobel Prize winner, Robert Merton, has thrown down the gauntlet. He claims that by focusing on a retirement income goal he can beat any competitor that is managing a 70:30 portfolio that has wealth accumulation as the goal. Do you dare take him on? The defined contribution pension management industry has it wrong, according to […]
Amanda WhiteDecember 18, 2013
Asset Classes

Liquidity tightens, volatility rises

How should pension funds in the United Kingdom best prepare for the government unwinding quantitive easing (QE) and tightening monetary policy? The Bank of England isn’t showing any signs of ending QE just yet, its policy begun in 2009 and designed to stimulate the economy by creating new money to buy government bonds. But QE […]
Sarah RundellSeptember 11, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Paul Marsh: live with low returns

The London Business School’s emeritus professor of finance Paul Marsh admits that you have to be slightly mad to embark on the kind of research detailed in the latest edition of Global Investment Returns Yearbook. This year Marsh and colleagues Elroy Dimson and Mike Staunton – Marsh describes the three of them, pictured below, as […]
Sarah RundellJune 19, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Tail risk parity, V 1.0

Just when you thought you were safe, the next reiteration of risk parity has arrived. AllianceBernstein’s tail risk parity takes the concept of risk parity, reallocating assets uniformly according to risk, but it uses tail risk, not volatility, as the core measure. The concept of risk parity is a portfolio diversified according to risk, rather […]
Amanda WhiteMay 22, 2013
Investor Profile

Illiquid medicine brings rude health to the Wellcome Trust

Sir Henry Wellcome, the early twentieth century pharmaceuticals magnate (pictured below), would be pleased with how well the London-based charitable foundation that bears his name has weathered the global downturn. The Wellcome Trust (WT), which supports medical research in Britain and around the world, reported a total return of 12 per cent for the year […]
Richard TomlinsonJanuary 18, 2013
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