News category: Featured Articles

The USD6.4 billion Fire & Police Pension Association of Colorado has been looking to further diversify some elements of its fixed income and credit portfolio in the current interest-rate environment. The allocator made some new investments in absolute return managers, that were more fundamental than quantitative, back in September. EQDerivatives followed up with Scott Simon, chief investment officer at FPPA, to chat about portfolio implementation as a bottom up investor, the impact of passive exposure across asset classes and the future of the pension’s allocation style.

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The USD1.4 billion Swiss asset manager Dominicé celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. Dominicé runs alternative investments, real estate and wealth management. Within the alternative investments unit sits four funds in volatility arbitrage and quantitative equities, as well as custom solutions. EQDerivatives caught up with Pierre de Saab, partner at the firm, to discuss how its flagship volatility strategy Cassiopeia has evolved and how the fund is operating within the current environment.

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With more than two decades in international investments and executive leadership, Ela Karahasanoglu, chief executive officer at EKR Total Portfolio Advisory, has established herself as a trusted advisor in the industry. Her expertise lies in providing guidance to institutional investors and asset managers on alternative investments, risk mitigation and portfolio construction from a holistic perspective. EQDerivatives’ Dallon Lewis spoke with Karahasanoglu about the connection between risk and the total portfolio approach, how investment management should be handled at the allocator level and her view on the challenge of working as a female investment executive.

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Liquid alternative strategies are proving to be a popular choice for many institutions. This comes as the strategies have been performing well amid uncertainty in the market.

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Brazil-born funds are starting to step out of Latin America as the industry matures. Some fund managers are looking to the U.S. to expand and believe the time may be right for their peers, too, as North American investors are increasingly looking to diversify their external manager mix as well as add emerging market exposure.

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A growing number of family offices in Singapore are looking to add more complexity to their portfolios to improve diversification. Traditionally family offices hedged their equity exposure with bond portfolios but as the two asset classes grow increasingly correlated, these investors are looking to firms like GAO Capital to help them integrate systematic strategies and multi-strategy funds.

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Record volumes of zero-days-to-expiration options have started to change implied volatility dynamics and that has institutional investors sitting up and paying attention. Although the 0DTE trend is still somewhat new, only kicking off in earnest at the end of last year, U.S. exchanges see it as fueling increasing growth in short-dated options trading.

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Trend-following strategies had a stellar year in 2022, once again proving their value in down markets across asset classes. But expectations for this year are mixed.

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Investor interest in alternative risk premia strategies is back. While for some, faith in the strategy never faded in spite of some rocky performance periods, for others its disappointing returns through COVID-19, hot on the heels of poor returns in 2018, were too low to ignore. But that all started to change earlier this year when interest started to pick back up; something that has continued throughout the year as ARP strategies have provided some much-needed relief at a time where sentiment in listed markets has weakened and equities have suffered. EQDerivatives’ Georgia Reynolds reports on how a tailored and more tactical ARP approach is gaining favor with investors.

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There was a time when these pages were filled with features on alternative risk premia. We wrote thousands of words about risk premia construction, implementation and backtesting. We wrote about benchmarking, tilting and timing, about bank-structured ARP and actively-managed risk premia. And of course, we wrote about the holy grail: the all-weather risk premia portfolio.

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