Asset allocation
Analysing correlations under stress
Analysing correlations under stress
Factors on demand
Linear factor models are commonly used by portfolio managers to capture sources of risk, traditionally split between systematic and idiosyncratic types. By using the conditional link between flexible bottom-up estimation, and top-down attribution, factor…
Fixed income investors look to ethical funds – but do they pay?
Of all asset classes, fixed income has been one of the slowest to embrace ethical investment. Thanks in part to the growing influence of sovereign wealth funds, this may be set to change. But for many, lingering questions about whether constraining your…
Quant Congress USA: Asset class diversification outmoded, says Pimco MD
New regime needs macro diversification, says Vineer Bhansali
Factors on demand
Attilio Meucci introduces a multi-asset-class return decomposition framework that extends beyond the standard systematic-plus-idiosyncratic approach. This framework, which rests on the conditional link between flexible bottom-up estimation factor models…
How to pick crisis-proof credits
The credit bull run of 2009 is a footnote in history. But discerning fund managers are finding there is still value to be had in credit; the challenge is picking the right names.
FirstEnergy and Allegheny announce $8.5bn merger
FirstEnergy and Allegheny Energy have announced an $8.5 billion stock-for-stock merger transaction that would create a diversified generation portfolio including 2,200 megawatts (MW) of renewables.
Active risk control
Richard Bibb explores the pitfalls of value-at-risk statistics and explains how they can be interpreted and incorporated into a meaningful risk management strategy
Capinordic expansion
Capinordic Asset Management, part of the Denmark-based Capinordic Bank, is planning to launch a structured products distribution business in Sweden. Pierre Cooper talks to Johan Tjeder, the fund manager who has been brought in to help set up the operation
Safety advice
Feature
Transition revamp
The asset transition business is undergoing a major transformation, with strong risk management and pre-trade analysis capabilities becoming an increasingly important service differentiator. How are transition managers meeting the needs of Asian clients?…
Valid Assumptions Required: aggregation
In the first article of this series, in which Brett Humphreys questions some of the assumptions and decisions that go into the calculation of value-at-risk, he focuses on portfolio aggregation.
Beyond Black-Litterman: views on non-normal markets
In normally distributed markets, the Black-Litterman technique allows managers to construct portfolios that account for their views on a set of expected returns. Attilio Meucci extends the Black-Litterman framework to generic market distributions and…
New interest in portfolio asset allocation
The top positions in our annual most cited authors table (A) demonstrate continued interest in credit derivatives in recent years. The lead is taken by Robert Jarrow, who contributed on a wide range of topics. From table B, we see that the top 10 most…
Time for multi-period capital models
Several financial institutions use single-period models to determine their credit portfolio loss distribution, calculate their loss volatility and assign economic capital. Here, Kevin Thompson, Alistair McLeod, Panayiotis Teklos and Shobhit Gupta…
Maximum drawdown
The maximum loss from a market peak to a market nadir, commonly called the maximum drawdown (MDD), measures how sustained one’s losses can be. Malik Magdon-Ismail and Amir Atiya present analytical results relating the MDD to the mean return and the…
DrKW adds to sales and trading in Paris
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW) has made a number of sales and trading appointments within its capital markets team in Paris.
Corporate Statement > What it takes: Turning Basel II Compliance into a Competitive Edge
The heat is on. The ideals and debates have given way to the hard realities of compliance, and time is running out. But rather than engage in a reactive scramble to demonstrate compliance, firms can use the regulatory imperatives of Basel II as an…
Northern Trust to provide corporate governance data to custodial clients
The Northern Trust Company, a custody, asset administration and investment management services firm, is offering institutional clients using its Global Investor Passport portal access to Corporate Governance Quotient (CGQ) scores set by Institutional…
Bidding principles
Robert Almgren and Neil Chriss show how principal bid programme trades can be priced and evaluated as part of a trading business. By annualising the price impacts and variances of such trades, they construct an information ratio measure that can be used…
Minimising extremes
Portfolio diversification often breaks down in stressed market environments, but the co-movement of asset prices in a tail risk regime may be modelled using a coefficient of tail dependence. Here, Yannick Malevergne and Didier Sornette show how such…
Portfolio allocation to corporate bonds with correlated defaults
This article deals with the problem of optimal allocation of capital to corporate bonds in fixed income portfolios when there is the possibility ofcorrelated defaults. Under fairly general assumptions for the distribution of thetotal net assets of a set…