Browsing: Institutional Asset Management

By Rob Croce, PhD – Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Mellon & Aaron Filbeck, CAIA, CFA, CIPM – Associate Director of Content Development at CAIA Association In 2000, United States 10-year government bonds rates were 6% and the median U.S. public pension plan had an actuarial return assumption ofRead More

Lydia Ofori, CFA, CAIA Chief Executive Officer at Victoria Lion Partners Private assets have come of age, in part thanks to an over stretched liquid market which has led to little or no room for alpha generation, and also due to a growing familiarity of the concept of private ownershipRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Perhaps the most prescient definition of alpha is simply undiscovered beta, and if you look at this idea through the quinquagenarian endowment model, you might just see the point. In the good old days, investment performance and alpha were one in the same. Along cameRead More

By Rodney Sullivan, CFA, CAIA, Executive Director, University of Virginia Darden School of Business US recessions are typically accompanied by declines in stock market returns and, of course, 2020 has been no exception. We are once again reminded that investing is not easy leaving many investors to wonder how bestRead More

Alternative investment managers were evolving in the context of changing market conditions even before the Covid-19 pandemic, although the virus has speeded up the process. What is emerging is an alternatives landscape where pure-play hedge funds will be rare. That is one of the conclusions of a new study byRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Since this What About Beta column started about two years and almost 75 entries ago, the goal has always been to take a CAIA article, a relevant news story, or an industry trend and amplify it, replete with an occasional catchy title, and maybeRead More

By Ashby Monk, Executive and Research Director at Global Projects Center, Stanford University & Dane Rook, Research Engineer at Global Projects Center, Stanford University “The world needs institutional investors to save society as we know it.” Say these words to your mother, and she may check your temperature; say them at aRead More

It has been 10 years since the United Kingdom introduced a Stewardship Code, drawn up by its Financial Reporting Council (FRC), a quasi-governmental agency. The code was meant to remedy some of the inadequacies in the system of corporate governance that, it was thought, the crises of 2007-2008 had revealed.Read More

By Aaron Filbeck, CAIA, CFA, CIPM | Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association While every retirement plan participant has unique life and planning circumstances, they generally (and almost evenly) split into two broad categories regarding investment philosophies: the do-it-yourself crowd and the do-it-for-me crowd. The do-it-yourself crowd typically followsRead More

By Hossein Kazemi, PhD, CFA, Senior Advisor at CAIA Association, and Aaron Filbeck, CAIA, CFA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association “There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infiniteRead More

By Bill Kelly, CAIA Association CEO Our story starts with a former Eagle Scout known as Barber. While his name had absolutely nothing to do with his ultimate professional calling, Barber Conable did, perhaps unwittingly, become the Sweeney Todd of the defined benefit plan. Barber Conable lived a noble lifeRead More

By Aaron Filbeck, CAIA, CFA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association During CAIA Association’s most recent Virtual Chapter event, Keith and I (virtually) sat down with Chris Tidmore, CFA, CPA at The Vanguard Group to discuss Vanguard’s recent whitepaper, “The Wrapper Matters: Comparing Liquid Alternatives to Hedge Funds”Read More

By Aaron Filbeck, CAIA, CFA, CIPM Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association Original Article: “Direct Investments” by Paul Kenny, AIAR Volume 8, Issue 3 Viewpoint Author: Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM Excerpted from the Alternative Investment Analyst Review, Volume 8, Issue 3 The Alternative Investment Analyst Review is theRead More

John Bowman, CFA, Senior Managing Director at CAIA Association “If the devil can quote Scripture, in his spare time he might be working on private capital return methodology.” So uttered Bill Elfers in 1995, founder of Greylock Capital and arguably modern venture capital itself. Eleven years later in 2006, HowardRead More

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association, and Keith Black, PhD, CFA, CAIA, FDP, Managing Director, Content Strategy at CAIA Association “Diversification is back” – now that’s not a phrase we’ve heard in a long time…long time. Considering recent market performance, we thought thatRead More

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association Excerpted from the Alternative Investment Analyst Review, Volume 8, Issue 1 The Alternative Investment Analyst Review is the official publication of the CAIA Association. Access to the most current issue is an exclusive benefit of CAIA MembershipRead More

In 2015 the United Nations defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals [no poverty, no hunger, health & well-being, etc.] along with 169 targets that were devised to allow for quantitative measurement of progress. It also set 2030 as the bull’s eye for the attainment of the goals. Since governments alone areRead More

We can, in a speculative mood, ask ourselves, “Will hedge fund fees continue to drop or have they reached an equilibrium after the decline of recent years?” But it would be better to ask instead “whose fees?” For talk of the “average” fee hides the fact that discounting for volume,Read More

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association Central Issue of the Paper If you’re a social media junkie, you have probably seen “#goals” in your timeline. In most cases, the hashtag is referring to an attractive couple or an aesthetically pleasing plate of food.Read More

John Bowman, CFA, Senior Managing Director at CAIA Association “You’re a kite dancing in a hurricane, Mr. Bond.” (Mr. White to 007, Spectre) Despite the crystal blue island water, softly rolling Caribbean tide, and perfect skies outside the hotel all week, I opened my conference wrap-up panel reminding delegates forRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association While this week’s post may harken to a certain book written by John Coates, there is a different play on the metaphor at work here, with our wheezing planet spinning in the center. Consider the wolf: powerful, aggressive, and risk-seeking. The wolf is alsoRead More

Sustainability-sensitive investing has a net positive impact on performance, according to a paper released by Robeco. According to the paper written by Chris Berkouwer, a Robeco equity analyst, ESG was responsible for 20% of the outperformance of a Robeco fund over a period of three years. His findings are presentedRead More

By Bill Kelly, CAIA Association CEO In the interest of brevity, I am going to skip the salutation and get right to the heart of the matter. As my name implies, I am Leery of the lofty promises that depend on solving our long-term problems and I do remain inRead More

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), a non-profit organization has developed industry-specific standards across environmental, social, and governance topics, working toward a consensus on the sorts of disclosures that the issuers of securities should and will make to their investors. In November 2018, SASB released complete standards for 77 industries.Read More

By Guest Contributor Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development The death of the 60/40 may be a welcome change for multi-asset investors who understand that exposure to risk premia is perhaps a far better long-term investment strategy. Diversification remains an important facet of asset allocation, but weRead More

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM & Hossein Kazemi, PhD, CFA, CAIA Association & CISDM This is a summary of the editor’s letter originally published in the Volume 8, Issue 4 of the Alternative Investment Analyst Review, a journal published by CAIA Association. The Problem with Studies Many studies onRead More

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has changed the rules for the managers of commodity pools. The new regulations, approved in November and published in the Federal Register for Dec. 10, take effect on Thursday, January 9, 2020. Some key points about these changes: They have codified Family Office No-Action Letters,Read More

By Daniel Fang, CFA, CAIA, Quantitative Research, and Diana Olteanu-Veerman, CFA, Quantitative Strategy, Northern Trust Asset Management Composite Equity Issuance (Cei) Can be a Proxy for Intangible Returns Anomalies Even though factor investing is widely supported in academia and investment practice, forecasting and harvesting factor returns remains challenging for various reasons.Read More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Ebenezer Scrooge was not exactly a cuddly CEO. The way he treated poor Bob Cratchit alone would not have exactly put Scrooge & Marley Ltd. in the top quartile of the Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings, as he routinely gutted any notion of social responsibility.Read More

Disruption is the trend of the moment in many industries and the investment world is no exception. Deloitte Insights has just posted an article that takes a comprehensive look at the investment world today, traditional and alternative. Its theme is that this world is in search of new leadership andRead More

Amundi-CREATE Research has offered its independent assessment on challenges now faced by the world’s pension funds, given the policies of central banks. The subject is of great significance to alternative investments managers who represent the aggressive end of many a pension fund’s portfolio. The gist of the report is thatRead More

Prime brokers help funds of hedge funds identify hedge funds, which creates what the authors of a new paper call a PB bias. This means that portfolios are overweighted to the hedge funds serviced by the connected prime brokers. The scholars tested (and confirmed) the intuitive hypothesis that the biasRead More

By Bill Kelly, CAIA Association CEO The American history buffs out there will know that we are just a few short weeks away from the 246th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Back in 1773, the British government was deep in debt and decided the very best course was toRead More

A recent publication from Fidelity Institutional Asset Management, while looking at the money markets in the US, emphasizes that investors are looking for liquidity. The report, written by Kerry Pope and Chris Lewis, each an institutional portfolio manager with FIAM, begins with a discussion of the Federal Reserve’s September rateRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association While Harvard the institution is legendary, much less is known about its founding other than by some who have taken those tedious Cambridge tours or the gifted alum who studied their way in through one of those 25 famous gates. Harvard College was foundedRead More

By John L. Bowman, CFA This editorial first appeared on Sept. 18 in Crain’s Pensions & Investments online edition. It’s open season on private equity in the Democratic presidential debates. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and others have made attacking “Wall Street” a major plank in their campaign platforms.Read More

A recent study by two scholars at the University of California Irvine asks how quickly investors learn about the skills of their asset managers, including their hedge fund managers. Christopher Schwarz and Zheng Sun, both associate professors of finance at The Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine, hadRead More

Cowen’s Capital Introduction Group has compiled information on what the endowment and foundation community is thinking about hedge funds and how best to invest in them. The Cowen paper on the subject begins with the observation, drawn from Preqin, that at present US-based E&Fs with more than $750 million inRead More

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development surveys the main quantitative investment restrictions to which pension funds and other pension providers are subject in both OECD countries and a selection of International Organization of Pension Supervisors’ (IOPS) member countries. It reminds us of the general desireRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Why are we still talking about this? No, it’s not the central bankers and their insatiable easing tendencies, trade wars with China, or even the Women’s World Cup football match (sorry Netherlands!). These stories all make great headlines, drive news ratings, generate tickertape parades,Read More

An arm of Brookfield Asset Management, Brookfield Infrastructure, announced that it is leading a group of investors to buy Genesee & Wyoming for a cash payment of $112 per share, a premium of nearly 40% over the pre-announcement stock price. This is a big infrastructure play. G&W is a freightRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Ask someone of a certain generation to name the most common worldwide distress signal, and they will likely come back with SOS. No surprise then that this same signal, borne from the Morse code, turns 111 years old on this date in history. MostRead More

The Family Office Exchange (FOX) has released a report on the state of the ultra-wealthy advisory business. The report, based on a survey and interviews, draws three broad conclusions: first, the business is in a healthy condition; second, its value proposition is in transition, away from asset-based and toward retainer-basedRead More

By Charles Skorina We recently looked at the number of women CIOs at big endowments*. Among 109 North American endowments over $1 billion we identified twenty (18 plus one director of investments and one CFO who liaises with their OCIO providers). That’s just 18%–less than one out of five. ForRead More

By Charles Skorina In February we published an abbreviated list of five-year endowment performance for fiscal year end June 30, 2018 for 61 schools to compliment the release of the annual NACUBO TIAA study.  Today, we introduce our big list with one hundred large endowments. Every CIO on our listRead More

By Charles Skorina We’re executive recruiters, not lawyers, so you generally won’t catch us opining on important lawyerly stuff like detinue, replevin, trover; or even usufruct (especially usufruct).  We’ll leave all that to the learned JDs. But, in our daily conversations with investment heads in the nonprofit world, we’ve beenRead More

Amundi, the French asset management firm that, less than a year ago, launched the world’s largest green bond and emerging markets-focused investment, has just posted a scholarly discussion, “How ESG Investing Has Impacted the Asset Pricing in the Equity Market.”  The paper begins by saying that academic study of ESG firmsRead More

A recent study of public employee retirement systems in the United States reaches conclusions, that, after a fair amount of “grey tsunami” alarmism in recent years, sound reassuring. The study, based on a recent survey of system managements conducted by the National Conference of Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) inRead More

Britain’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Alternative Investment Management has published a paper on the country’s pensions. It’s focus is defined contribution schemes especially and the demographic strain they face, and the prospect of their moving more heavily into alternative assets and strategies in response. Defined benefit schemes “have some freedomRead More

By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Waiting for Godot is a tragic comedy play by Samuel Beckett which first premiered on stage in Paris in 1953. There is only one scene and two primary characters who seem to know that they must wait for someone named Godot. They don’t knowRead More