Fixed Income
What Drives Bond Yields?
July 26, 2021
In this overview of the various factors that influence government bond yields, we show that both in theory and in the data, non-monetary policy factors drive significant variation in yields, particularly at longer maturities. Despite the exceptionally low yield environments we have witnessed, fundamentals continue to drive bond markets.
ESG Investing
(Car)Bon Voyage: The Road to Low Carbon Investment Portfolios
December 21, 2020
We discuss how an investment portfolio could dramatically reduce its carbon footprint, potentially even achieving a ‘net zero’ carbon footprint. We discuss the pros and cons of techniques to achieve carbon reduction goals, including security selection, shorting high carbon footprint companies, and trading instruments such as carbon offsets and carbon permits.
Macroeconomics
It’s Not a Bound; It’s an Opinion
November 20, 2020
In the second paper of our “Bonds Today” series, we review the popular belief that bond yields are too close to zero to fall much further and then explain why we disagree.
Asset Allocation
Don’t Hate the Asset; Hate the Constraint
November 20, 2020
What role do bonds play in a portfolio today? We explain why it all depends on investors’ ability to own them in a capital efficient way.
Portfolio Risk and Performance
Tail Risk Hedging: Contrasting Put and Trend Strategies
July 8, 2020
The sharp market fall and speedy recovery during the eventful first half of 2020 has kept tail risk hedging topical: investors have both fresh memories of a painful loss and renewed fears of a repeat. We try to offer a balanced overview of the strengths and weaknesses of direct and indirect tail hedging strategies.
Equities
Understanding a Tax-Aware Defensive Equity Long-Short Strategy
April 17, 2020
We describe a hypothetical Tax-Aware Defensive Equity Long-Short strategy, including its construction and pre-tax and after-tax performance. The strategy closely replicates the pre-tax performance of a similar hypothetical tax-agnostic strategy and has the potential to achieve a meaningful tax benefit for a taxable investor.
Equities
Equity Term Structures without Dividend Strips Data
March 12, 2020
We use a large cross-section of equity returns to estimate a rich affine model of equity prices, dividends, returns and their dynamics.. The new term structure data generated by our model represent new empirical moments that can be used to guide and evaluate asset pricing models.
Asset Allocation
Enhanced Portfolio Optimization
March 2, 2020
We show how to identify the portfolios that cause problems in standard mean-variance optimization (MVO) and develop an enhanced portfolio optimization (EPO) method that addresses the problems. Applying EPO on several realistic datasets, we find significant gains relative to standard benchmarks.
Alternative Investing
Market Crashes and Merger Completions
February 24, 2020
A primary concern in mergers and acquisitions is the risk that the deal may be cancelled before completion. We document that this "interim risk" varies asymmetrically with the aggregate stock market: When the market falls sharply, cash deals are more than twice as likely to be cancelled.