Executive Summary The debate about “active versus passive” investment management has received considerable attention. The average active equity manager regularly struggles to outpace the market; however, some managers perform better than average and studies generally conclude that some managers do exhibit skill. As a result, we attempt to answer a different question: how can investors…
While cap-weighted benchmarks for bond portfolios remain the norm, indexes based on other criteria are increasingly available. Benchmarks are an essential tool for investors to monitor and analyze overall portfolio performance, as well as the success of investment strategies and managers. Comparing manager performance against benchmarks also can help inform decisions about whether to use…
In 2014, we expect a rougher road for Australia, which is currently in a transition phase that has been quite benign so far, but may not remain so.
EM equity valuations are the key driver of returns over the long term. The benefit from valuation mean reversion should be substantial, as EM equities trade at a 35% discount to DM equities and a 45% discount to U.S. equities, compared to our assumed fair value discount of 10%. We expect EM equities to remain…
Institutional investors considering an allocation to a hedge fund are typically reasonably equipped to evaluate its suitability for their portfolios. However, traditional yardsticks are inadequate for evaluating multi-manager (MM) hedge funds. Due to the uniqueness of their organizational structure and fund terms, MM funds often exhibit unusual yet ultimately explainable behavior. The intention of this…
The new Treasury FRNs are attractive not only for money market funds and institutions that roll T-bills within large liquidity or collateral pools, but also for other institutional investors intent on reducing interest rate risk within their fixed income allocation.
Executive Summary Private investments often play an important role in an investor’s portfolio, yet the inconsistent methodologies typically used to evaluate private investment performance and public market performance result in a lack of understanding about true relative performance. The two most common measures of investment performance—time-weighted returns (TWRs) and money-weighted returns, typically an internal rate…
Grain demand from the emerging world is likely to persist, although given rich land prices in some regions, investors should proceed carefully in this developing asset class.
Africa’s changing political and economic landscape over recent decades offers investment prospects worthy of consideration. In this report, we address the key opportunities and risks associated with public (long-only and hedge funds) and private market investing in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on Frontier Africa. We find that public markets exhibit attractively low correlations to…
Looking ahead to 2014 we are focused on several key themes, among them the evolution of global monetary policy, the likelihood of European equities exceeding diminished expectations, and the headwinds, risks, and opportunities associated with emerging markets equities.