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Uncategorised posts

Scenario analysis: applicable to anything?

Attempts to apply a formula to asset allocation based on an asset’s historical volatility and relationship with other assets tend to fail when presented with black-swan events. Equities tend to rise along with commodities except when presented with political events such as the price hikes in oil in 1973 that sent equities into free fall. […]
David RowleyJune 5, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Pension funds, where banks no longer go?

There continues to be potential for pension capital appearing where bank lending no longer wants to go. Commentators in the UK and continental Europe have heightened expectations that pension funds will step in to help fill the continent’s bank financing gap. Societe Generale, for instance, recently predicted further “disintermediation” by investors sidestepping banks and looking […]
Dan BillinghamMay 15, 2013
Research

Public pension governance and asset allocation

This paper from Matt Dobra and Bruce Lubich, of the Methodist University in North Carolina and the University of Maryland University College, respectively, analyses the relationship between governance, asset allocation, and risk among state and local government-operated pension systems in the United States of America. It is argued that governance influences investment decisions and risk profiles of public […]
STAFF WRITERApril 24, 2013
Investor Profile

NZ Super: contrarian Kiwis rewrite rules

No one who works at New Zealand Super has a business card that has an asset class attached to it. This simple representation speaks volumes to the investment approach taken by the fund. One could work for the strategy team or the investment analysis team, but the investment structure by which NZ Super invests, such […]
Amanda WhiteApril 17, 2013
Investor Profile

Inhouse target: zero to
$40 billion in 4 years

If everything continues on schedule, the $60-billion AustralianSuper will begin testing its new internal investment-management systems this month, with a view to managing its first money in house in the third quarter of 2013. Within four years the fund expects to manage as much as $40 billion in house, funded primarily from cash flow, and […]
Simon HoyleMarch 22, 2013
Research

A Framework for Examining Asset Allocation Alpha

Recognising that different asset allocation portfolios are suitable for investors with different needs, Jason Hsu and Omid Shakernia think it is probably too ambitious to establish a unifying structure for determining benchmark asset allocation portfolios. Instead, they propose a framework for thinking about asset allocation alpha, assuming that investors have suitably determined their asset allocation policy portfolio. And the framework is: […]
STAFF WRITERMarch 20, 2013
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