Tax Aware
Integration of Income and Estate Tax Planning
September 1, 2020
Preservation and transfer of wealth to future generations is one of the central financial goals for most high-net-worth families. We show that a family that invests with income and estate tax efficiency in mind can achieve substantially higher wealth levels than a family oblivious to taxes.
Value
Value and Interest Rates: Are Rates to Blame for Value’s Torments?
May 22, 2020
Some have blamed the interest rate environment for value stocks’ underperformance of growth stocks from 2017 to early 2020, as well as the stretch of lackluster performance for some value factors since Global Financial Crisis. We find the performance of value is not easily assessed based on the interest rate environment, and that factor timing strategies based on interest rate-related signals are likely to perform poorly.
Portfolio Risk and Performance
Portfolio Protection? It’s a Long (Term) Story…
April 23, 2020
Investors have a natural urge to protect their portfolios from sudden crashes, even though bad outcomes that unfold over longer periods are more detrimental to reaching long-term goals. We show risk-mitigating and diversifying strategies have added value more consistently than options-based hedging over the more important, longer drawdowns.
Value
Is (Systematic) Value Investing Dead?
March 14, 2020
Undoubtedly, many systematic approaches to value investing have suffered recently. However, we find the popular suggestion that value investing is dead to be premature. We find expectations of fundamental information have been and continue to be an important driver of security returns.
Fixed Income
(Systematic) Investing in Emerging Market Debt
March 4, 2020
We extend the analysis of systematic investment approaches to emerging market (EM) fixed income. We find that systematic exposures linked to carry, defensive, momentum and valuation themes are well compensated and lowly correlated in EM markets, and that a systematic approach to EM debt may be a powerful diversifier.
Tax Aware
Tax-Efficient Portfolio Transition: A Tax-Aware Relaxed-Constraint Approach to Switching Equity Managers
March 2, 2020
For a taxable investor with a highly appreciated equity portfolio, replacing the portfolio manager is likely to trigger substantial tax liabilities. We find that a tax-aware relaxed-constraint post-transition strategy significantly outperforms a traditional tax-agnostic long-only strategy in its ability to preserve and grow the investors after-tax wealth over the long term.
Factor/Style Investing
Fact and Fiction About Low-Risk Investing
February 17, 2020
Low-risk investing has received a lot of attention over the past decade. An intensive academic debate has spurred, and been spurred by, the growing market for low-risk strategies. This article presents five fact and dispels five fictions about low-risk investing.
Fixed Income
Active Fixed Income Illusions
December 17, 2019
Across a broad set of popular active fixed income categories, we find that passive exposures to traditional risk premia (especially exposure to credit risk) explain the majority of fixed income manager active returns.
Tax Aware
Lot Layering: The New Frontier for Hedge Fund Partnership Allocations
October 11, 2019
Despite its unavoidable deficiency caused by current regulations, we believe that lot layering aligns tax and economics more closely than any of the “aggregation” methods presently used by most hedge funds.
Machine Learning
Can Machines "Learn" Finance?
June 7, 2019
Can Machines “Learn” Finance?” was named the winner of the 2020 Harry M. Markowitz Award. Machine learning for asset management faces a unique set of challenges that differ markedly from other domains where machine learning has excelled. We discuss a variety of beneficial use cases and potential pitfalls for machine learning in asset management, and emphasize the importance of economic theory and human expertise for achieving success through financial machine learning.