News & Research

Qontigo’s Tax-Managed Investing solution enables asset managers to improve post-tax returns through tax savings. Two new whitepapers investigate the benefit of active tax management for investment strategies, focusing on a broad cap-weighted equity market index and on factor-based strategies.

Dividend Yield strategies are starting to stage a comeback, no thanks to European banks. After banks stopped paying dividends and exited the STOXX Europe Select Dividend 30 index, the index saw large changes in its profile, with Real Estate contributing the largest proportion of dividend yield to the index, followed by Insurance.

The macroeconomy has dominated financial news in recent weeks, driven in no small part by the specter of rising inflation. In a fortunate coincidence, Qontigo has just released the new Axioma Macroeconomic Projection Equity Factor Risk Model (WWMP4).

The recent euphoric trading of GameStop and other high-flying stocks—prompted by retail traders trying to squeeze institutional short sellers out of their positions—had a substantial impact on specific risk, particularly on less diversified portfolios, but even large benchmarks such as the Russell 2000 have been affected.

Sustainability has moved from a tangential consideration to a crucial criterion in portfolio construction. A line-up of experts told this year’s Qontigo Investment Intelligence Summit how this evolution is re-shaping the entire investment landscape.

The US market saw an even stronger concentration in stocks recently, with FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) accounting for 14% of the weight in the STOXX USA 900 on Oct. 9. Add Microsoft to the mix, and the six stocks made up 20% of the US index. Just since July, the aggregate weight of these six stocks increased by one percent in the US index.

The COVID-19 crisis has accentuated long-term trends in the European equity market, with Health Care solidifying its dominance in the STOXX® Europe 600 Index, and Banks shedding further ground.

The spectacular “recovery” of US blue-chip stock indices is frequently cited as an indication that investors are betting on a swift, “V-shaped” global recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

Active strategies that tilt on dividend yield have suffered mightily during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dividend yield ETFs, for example, have strongly underperformed the broader US market, as investors lost confidence in companies’ ability to pay dividends.

While US predicted risk as measured by Qontigo’s short-horizon fundamental model has retreated substantially, it remains in the top decile of values relative to where it has been historically. It would have to drop by almost 50% from its current level just to get back to the long-term median.

Most games are defined by their probabilities. Take a coin toss, for example. If the coin is fair, players should expect an average of zero wins over the long-term given the game’s 50-50 probability.

For many weeks, investors and market commentators have been puzzled by the apparent “disagreement” between the stock and the bond markets over the expected shape of the economic recovery.