We examine the distribution of rebalancing premiums for a simple risk parity implementation (a version of the Permanent Portfolio) consisting of US stocks, gold and bonds from 1982 through May 2020. We then proceed to analyze historical and expected future rebalancing premia for a variety of global risk parity strategies ..
Keep ReadingRisk Parity
Risk Parity in the Time of COVID
Consistent with misapprehensions expressed during other recent market crises, there has been a chorus of alarmist speculation about the actions and state of risk-parity strategies during the current crash. We felt it would be helpful to revisit the concept of risk parity and take a snapshot of how a typical global risk parity strategy might have been expected to behave this year.
Keep ReadingPortfolio Optimization and the Sharpe Multiplier: A Case Study on Managed Futures
We’ve spent a great deal of time in past articles discussing the merits of portfolio optimization. In this article we will examine the merits and challenges of portfolio optimization in the context of one of the most challenging investment universes: managed futures.
Keep ReadingPortfolio Optimization: Simple versus Optimal Methods
Our whitepaper “The Optimization Machine: A General Framework for Portfolio Choice” presented a logical framework for thinking about portfolio optimization given specific assumptions regarding expected relationships between risk and return. We explored the fundamental roots of common portfolio …
Keep ReadingReSolve Buffett Bet Portfolio Based on Risk Parity and Factors
In 2008 Warren Buffett proposed a public bet that actively managed investment products, plagued by high fees, would not live up to the goal of beating a passive investment in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF over the subsequent decade. Only one person had the intellectual conviction to represent the …
Keep ReadingRisk Parity and The Four Faces of Risk
The goal of this article is to summarize the complex dynamics that drive asset returns. You’ll discover that asset returns are impacted by four sources of risk. Two of these risks affect all assets in the same way, and therefore are undiversifiable. The other two risks …
Keep ReadingRisk Parity isn’t the Problem, it’s the Solution
Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently released a research note suggesting that Risk Parity investment strategies currently represent a substantial source of systematic risk in global markets. The note was picked up breathlessly by several media outlets and posted under …
Keep ReadingMeasuring Tactical Alpha, Part 1
Grinold linked investment alpha and Information Ratio to the breadth of independent active bets in an investment universe with his Fundamental Law of Active Management. Breadth is often misinterpreted as the number of eligible securities in a manager’s investment universe, but this ignores the impact of correlation.
Keep ReadingForget active vs. passive. It’s all about factors
We just love a good debate, and there seems to be quite a heated debate at the moment about the relative utility of passive versus active investing. Perhaps this debate is as timeless as investment management itself, but a flurry of recent studies may have finally armed passive advocates with enough ammunition to settle the argument once and for all.
Keep ReadingDo You Spinu? A Novel Equal Risk Contribution Method for Risk Parity
Risk Parity seems to have (temporarily?) lost its place near the top of the institutional asset allocation wish list, no doubt because it proved vulnerable to policy shocks during last year’s central bank equivocation. Nevertheless we continue to believe the concept is valuable if thoughtfully applied.
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