ESG Investing

Investing in a Warming World

September 1, 2026 - Steffen Bixby

Popular carbon metrics can make portfolios appear to be decarbonizing even when underlying emissions change little. This paper explains why investors should distinguish between relative carbon exposure and financed emissions when evaluating climate-aware investment strategies.

Factor/Style Investing

Academic Alpha

August 19, 2026 - Thomas Maloney Tobias J. Moskowitz

This paper reintroduces style premia investing—or “academic alpha”—and explains how well-researched, skillfully implemented strategies can provide liquid, transparent, and cost-effective sources of uncorrelated returns. It highlights how continued innovation in signal design, portfolio construction, and multi-asset implementation can strengthen their role as long-term portfolio diversifiers.

Relaxed Constraint

Active Extension

November 24, 2025 - Jeffrey Cao Peter Hecht Dave Kershner Bill Latimer Peihan Zhao

This paper explores how Active Extension (AE)—a long-short framework—may enhance portfolio performance. By allowing skilled managers to short unattractive stocks and overweight more attractive ones, AE offers a liquid, capital-efficient path to improved active returns and long-term wealth outcomes.

Alternative Investing

Diversifying Alternatives and the Rearview Mirror

November 3, 2025 - Antti Ilmanen Thomas Maloney

Part 10: This paper examines how investor biases and performance-chasing behaviors can undermine the benefits of long/short diversifying alternatives. We explore why such strategies often feel disappointing in bull markets, yet remain vital for long-term portfolio resilience.

Fixed Income

Bond Market Focus: Yield Curves and Mean Reverting Rate Expectations

October 7, 2025 - Antti Ilmanen

Part 9: The yield curve largely reflects investors’ tendency to expect rates to revert toward past norms. This paper highlights how this pattern explains both the predictive power and the persistent forecasting missteps in bond markets.

Fixed Income

Bond Market Focus: Understanding Treasury Yields with Survey Data

September 17, 2025 - Antti Ilmanen Thomas Maloney

Part 8: This paper explores how survey data can decompose U.S. Treasury yields into inflation expectations, real rate expectations, and required bond risk premia. The analysis highlights how these components have evolved since the 1980s and the risks posed by today’s policy challenges to anchored inflation expectations.

Equities

Equity Market Focus: Subjective Expected Returns

August 21, 2025 - Antti Ilmanen

Part 7: While objective expectations are typically inferred from market prices or yields, subjective expectations are best inferred from survey data. This paper highlights interesting differences across investor groups in their tendency to overextrapolate or to be overoptimistic.

Asset Allocation

Diversifiers Forever

July 31, 2025 - Thomas Maloney Josh Stone

In a portfolio whose investment horizon is forever, do diversifying investments add any value? In this short paper, we illustrate the surprising power of diversification for ultra-long-term investors.

Equities

Equity Market Focus: Objective Expected Returns

July 31, 2025 - Antti Ilmanen Thomas Maloney

Part 6: This paper reviews the strengths and weaknesses of using valuation-based metrics like CAPE and CAEY to estimate long-run equity market returns. While these models remain the most robust objective tools available, their predictive power is nuanced and often overstated.

Equities

Equity Market Focus: Interrogating the Historical Data

July 10, 2025 - Antti Ilmanen

Part 5: We discuss how historical average returns can be useful estimates of future expected returns (only) if expected returns are constant and the sample is unbiased.