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.

Tax Aware

Tax-Aware Investing: 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.

Tax Aware

Levering Up to Do Good: Direct Long-Short Investing and Charitable Giving

We use historical strategy simulations to evaluate the advantages of donating appreciated stock in the context of tax-aware long-short factor strategies. We find long-short strategies exhibit several advantages over long-only investments.

Tax Aware

A 3-for-1 Solution for Concentrated Stock

Long/short tax-aware factor strategies may provide the means to offset gains resulting from a transition from a concentrated stock to a diversified portfolio.

Annual ESG Report 2023

Tax Aware

AQR Factor Research Papers Win Prestigious Academic Awards

Factor investing (combined with tax-aware implementation) can offer investors substantial rewards in the form of both pre-tax returns and tax benefits. Two papers by our colleagues recently won highly prestigious awards from top academic and practitioner journals for their research on factor investing, demonstrating our commitment to top-notch factor research.