News & Research

This paper investigates the effectiveness of a proxy for the new SDI Innovation Outlook score in predicting equity returns and enabling the construction of outperforming portfolios.

In this research paper, we showcase how a portfolio manager can replicate fixed income indices using the Axioma Portfolio Optimizer and the Axioma Credit Spread Factor Risk Model. We replicate a US high yield index with liquid bonds and a set of derivatives and test the solution from a risk perspective. The end goal is to create a set of portfolios that is more cost efficient, as (or more) liquid and as diversified as the index.

Term spreads have risen in multiple regions around the globe, as long-term sovereign yields soared amid rising (expected and actual) inflation but central banks took longer to raise short-term interest rates. The impact of this on international real estate has mostly been positive over the past two-and-a-half years.

Real estate has long had the reputation of being at least a partial hedge against inflation, since both rental income and property values typically respond positively to inflationary pressures. The iSTOXX Developed and Emerging Markets ex USA PK VN Index has lived up to this reputation historically and is continuing to do so in the current inflationary environment.

The STOXX WTW Climate Transition Indices are a new approach to managing climate risk that offer investors a systematic and transparent way to incorporate climate transition risk into their investment decisions.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine spooked equity investors around the world, but losses were not distributed equally across all sectors, with some industries even exhibiting positive returns. This opens up opportunities for more focused strategies such as thematic investing.

Another tech bubble may be about to burst, triggering a US recession. There are multiple similarities between the current tech bubble and the dot-com bubble. This time, however, the Fed cannot leverage interest-rate cuts to put the brakes on a market decline, due to the current record-high inflation combined with low interest rates.

In this research, we show a two-phase scenario-based CVaR hedging approach to help minimize downside risk in MAC portfolios.

Using our portfolio construction tools combined with Redpoint’s forecasted dividend yield, alpha signal and local market expertise, we developed an optimized income methodology.

Foreign-exchange rates can be very volatile. Investors looking to bet on markets outside their own base currency must decide whether to embrace or mitigate the additional risk. In this paper, we propose a stress-testing framework that can help investors with the decision whether “to hedge or not to hedge”, given their assumptions on expected returns and cross-asset correlations.

Tax alpha is an often-overlooked source of improving passive and smart-beta index performance with direct indexing offering an approach to harvest tax alpha in practice. Once confined to high-net worth investors, direct indexing is open to a much lower threshold, allowing wealth managers to help their clients harvest losses and defer gains on individual securities in the portfolio while tracking a parent index and satisfying each client’s personal needs.

Direct indexing continues to gain momentum as an investment strategy for its potential to provide higher post-tax returns and portfolio customization. Direct indexing strategies with active tax management target higher post-tax portfolio returns by achieving pre-tax investment goals with lower tax costs. In this paper, we investigate the benefit of active tax management for direct indexing strategies tracking broad cap-weighted equity market indices.