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Research

The real factor exposures in “smart beta” indexes

Investors relying on nomenclature of smart beta indexes as an accurate reflection of their factor exposures should take a closer look. New research, using a “factor efficiency ratio”, finds that most smart beta indexes are unable to provide desired factor exposures without taking on substantial unintended exposures. Importantly the paper finds that some smart beta […]
Amanda WhiteDecember 12, 2014
Research

Breaking down emerging markets active returns

New research by MSCI shows a rare insight into whether the factor phenomenon, driving development market equities beta, is at play in emerging markets. The research uses the Barra Emerging Markets Equity Model to look at the drivers of performance of emerging markets, and analyses the returns of active emerging market managers to identify the […]
Amanda WhiteNovember 21, 2014
Uncategorised posts

Why long-horizon investors should adopt factor-based asset allocation

Long-horizon investors can withstand macro-economic volatility and so should tilt towards strategies that are exposed to that, including value, small cap and momentum. Oleg Ruban, vice president in the applied research team at MSCI says this validates factor-investing and factor-based asset allocation for these investors.   Appropriate asset allocation requires explicit attention be paid to […]
Amanda WhiteOctober 3, 2014
Investor Profile

Japan’s GPIF allocates to smart beta

The $1.3 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund of Japan will use factor investing, or smart beta, as a third way of implementing equity mandates, alongside active and passive, following a six-month research project conducted by MSCI that investigated how to best implement the growing interest in factor exposures.   The research project conducted by MSCI […]
Amanda WhiteJuly 11, 2014
Investment Think Tanks

When does momentum shift to a risky bet?

Two finance professors at the London School of Economics have introduced a new way to measure the amount of risk arbitrage in markets. Their novel measure, dubbed “comomentum”, exploits time variation in how momentum stocks excessively “comove” together to reveal how crowded the classic price momentum trading strategy is at any point in time. They […]
Amanda WhiteJune 25, 2014
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