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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 […]
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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 […]
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 […]
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Gunning for diversity, dynamism and due diligence

The new low-return, high-volatility environment requires broadly diversified portfolios, dynamic decision-making and rigorous due diligence, which is beyond the internal capacity of most small funds under $10 billion, warns Russell Investment’s global chief investment officer Peter Gunning. He says smaller funds must decide if it is cost effective and even possible to internally manage investment […]
Research

Investing for the long run

Long‐horizon investors have an edge. This paper argues to take advantage of the long-run investors should institutionalise contrarian behaviour by adopting a rebalancing rule, and redefining the concept of risk away from just volatility.
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What is the future of hedge funds at CalPERS?

A rigorous debate between staff, consultant and investment committee has resulted in the $224-billion CalPERS deciding to fund an allocation to hedge funds from its global equities allocation, using futures to neutralise the policy allocation, rather than have a separate strategic asset class. But the strategy is on watch, and will be reviewed mid-next year.
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