Macroeconomics

An August of Discontent

We cover why investors should not shrug off the August market reversal as a blip. In an environment of continued macroeconomic uncertainty, episodes of volatility will likely persist. We discuss the importance of building a well-diversified portfolio that is resilient to a wide range of future economic scenarios.

Machine Learning

Can Machines Build Better Stock Portfolios?

In the second issue of our 2024 Alternative Thinking series, we showed that machine learning techniques can be used to help improve market timing strategies. In this issue, we extend these concepts to constructing stock selection strategies following a similar framework. Our results indicate more complex models utilizing machine learning techniques yield performance improvements relative to a simple, linear approach in the range of 50-100%, suggesting that machine learning can help to build better stock selection portfolios.

Alternative Investing

Seeking Resilient Growth: Why It’s Time for the LGPS to Consider Liquid Alternatives

Most Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) investment portfolios rely on substantial equity allocations to drive growth over the long term, but heroic rates of earnings growth would be needed to maintain recent strong equity performance. While LGPS have been turning to private assets to seek future returns and diversification, we make the case for truly diversifying liquid alternatives as a viable and versatile complement to existing portfolios, and explore the benefits of a transparent, quantitative approach.

Can Capital Losses Offset Gains from the Sale of Low-Basis Real Property?

In general, capital losses realized on stocks or other assets may offset capital gains, but not ordinary income, from the sale of a property. Therefore, it is important to understand which portion of the gain from the sale would be treated as capital gain and which would be treated as ordinary income.

Arbitrage

Are SPACs Still Alive?

The recent rise and fall of SPAC issuance and the poor returns of SPAC mergers might suggest that SPACs are a flash in the pan, but this is far from the truth. To the contrary, SPACs have been a compelling asset class for more than two decades. We explore the SPAC market, its history, and its investment characteristics, including why we believe SPACs are a safe investment when managed properly, with the potential for significant upside.

Tax Aware

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Investors seeking tax efficiency must look for strategies motivated by a pre-tax investment rationale, otherwise known as “economic substance.”

Alternative Investing

Broad Strategic Asset Allocation

This paper presents one justifiable set of inputs and finds that alternatives earn themselves a sizable strategic allocation. Investors are encouraged to compare these results with their own assumptions, constraints and allocations as they look to build a resilient portfolio for long-term investment success.

Long-Short

Portable Alpha: Still A Great Solution For Improving Return Outcomes

In the face of lower-than-average expected returns for equities, some investors may be considering adding active management to their equity allocations. However, the evidence supporting active long-only equities has long been underwhelming. We review an alternative approach – portable alpha.

Tax Aware

Levering Up to Do Good

Long/short tax aware strategies can be a win-win for the charitably inclined: larger donations for the charity and larger tax benefits for the donor.

Machine Learning

Can Machines Time Markets? The Virtue of Complexity in Return Prediction

Common wisdom has suggested that small, simple models are best suited for market timing applications, given finance’s “small data” constraint and naturally low predictability. However, we show that complex models better identify true nonlinear relationships and therefore produce better market timing strategy performance. We validate this "virtue of complexity" result in three practical market timing applications.