Investment insights.

28/05/2025

From hype to harvest: investing in the AI boom

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving from a research-driven frontier technology into a real economy disruptor. While enthusiasm is high, markets remain inefficient at pricing the complexity, cost, and global scope of this transformation.

10/04/2025

From neglect to opportunity: why early-stage UK enterprise is ripe for a comeback

It is no secret that the smaller, entrepreneurial end of the UK market has been unloved for some time – a small cap fund manager we met recently said to us “it’s like trying to sell toxic waste”!

19/03/2025

Global bond yields: unravelling the drivers of recent volatility

Global bond yields rose sharply from September 2024 to January 2025, driven mainly by higher term premia – the extra return investors require for holding longer-term bonds. Since then, roughly half of this increase has reversed as term premia have declined.

10/02/2025

Navigating Real Asset uncertainty and opportunity: our 2025 outlook

With the onset of Trump 2.0 and its hawkish foreign policy, anticipated trade tariffs are expected to significantly impact global economies and markets. This analysis focuses on the potential effects on listed and unlisted Real Assets, including Infrastructure, Real Estate, and Natural Resources.

15/01/2025

Trump’s tariffs – a challenge to the global economic order and to orthodox economics

The Trump administration’s prospective tariff policies, though not without historical precedent, signify a pivotal inflection point in US trade and economic strategy, reflecting a combination of economic protectionism and evolving geopolitical ambitions.

04/11/2024

A new approach for systematic strategies

Traditional systematic investment strategies often struggle to adapt to changing market conditions and shifts in the economic environment. This note introduces MARS (Macro Allocation and Risk System), a framework based on Bayesian statistics and modern macroeconomics

25/10/2024

“Adverse Selection” in private markets – bias or benefit?

Many institutional investors (e.g., wealth managers, master trusts etc.) are facing intense cost competition and are having to innovate their way through the challenge when allocating to (particularly private market, less liquid) alternative assets.

10/04/2024

Integrating sustainability considerations in Alternative Solutions

Setting out our aims to help our clients meet their sustainability objectives.

08/04/2024

Key areas of consideration when selecting an LTAF for DC Pension Schemes

With recent discussion surrounding LTAFs , we created this ‘handbook’ style article to outline some important areas

01/09/2023

Dynamic allocation is vital in times of macroeconomic uncertainty

It is well known that diversification reduces portfolio risk and improves investment outcomes.

04/07/2023

How much cash should a long-term portfolio hold?

At a time when financial markets are volatile and interest rates are rising, cash has greater appeal than it has done for some time.

03/07/2023

Has there been enough consolidation in the pensions industry?

We think it is important to examine, perhaps in a more abstract way than is common, the extent to which this trend should continue.

30/05/2023

Why scope-free emissions don’t stack up

Data quality and potential double-counting of emissions are common challenges cited by investors aiming to measure and/or reduce their value-chain (or ‘Scope 3’) emissions associated with investments.

11/05/2023

Proxy battles

As the proxy season continues, we aim to hold companies accountable for their performance on key sustainability and governance issues.

14/03/2023

Adjusting the resolution: reflections on the 2022 proxy season

Going beyond procedural problems such as appointing of auditors and the issuance of shares, topics such as ending fossil fuel financing, conducting a ‘racial equity audit’ or quantifying the monetary benefits of diversity initiatives are increasingly present on the ballot.

22/02/2023

Buying is good, building is better

The investment required to reach net zero is vast.

17/01/2023

A new world: private market innovation for DC

Back in 2020, with interest rates still at historically low levels, the Productive Finance Working Group was convened to find a way forward for UK pension savers to be able to more easily invest in long-term illiquid assets.

21/11/2022

Sustainability: Now, Never or When?

As an industry, we have lots of ideas on how to approach the challenge of ESG integration when it comes to investing in equities over the long run.

20/10/2022

The role of short-selling

There are three main approaches to integrating sustainability in a portfolio: namely Exclusion, Scoring and Thematic.

23/09/2022

Stars aligning for portfolio alignment

Amid the current market and geopolitical turmoil, one of the few ‘green’ linings has been the renewed political determination to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy and away from fossil fuels.

19/04/2022

Performance fees in DC – the agency problem

We recently conducted a poll on LinkedIn surveying whether DC savers should pay performance fees.

23/03/2022

Proxy Preview: Fulcrum’s votes at key AGMs this season

Scrutiny of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of companies has never been higher, and a growing number of investors are using their voting rights to hold companies to account.

21/02/2022

The tracking error error: why climate alignment calls for bolder steps

We explore the trade-offs between tracking error, forward and backward-looking climate metrics in the context of portfolio alignment.

17/02/2022

Low temperature and low regret? The trade-offs and opportunities when bringing climate change factors into a risk-return framework

Trade-offs lie at the heart of investing; the preference of more risk-averse investors for the stability of bonds relative to more volatile, but potentially more profitable equities is one classic example.

24/01/2022

Counting down carbon: Higher share prices through lower emissions

In this post, we look more closely at the factor that this research has found to have the highest upside across all sectors – addressing CO2 emissions.

07/12/2021

Using ESG data for real-world impact

Demand for environmental, social and governance (ESG) data and tools continues to grow, with tailwinds from changing investor preferences, as well as regulation.

25/11/2021

Ready, Set, Glasgow: What does the COP26 climate conference mean for investors?

We offer some of our key take-aways on the implications of COP26 for investors.

19/11/2021

‘The Great Reversal’ – Is it upon us?

Despite a modest uptick in recent months, government bond yields remain incredibly low and, in many cases, negative.

08/06/2021

Equity Dispersion – the Greeks

Equity dispersion trading allows investors to capture the correlation risk premium embedded in equity indices and revolves around selling index volatility and buying single stock volatility.

08/06/2021

A few thoughts on Dispersion weighting schemes

There are two weighting schemes that dispersion investors focus on, namely theta and vega neutral.

08/03/2021

Addressing the ESG conundrum in a reflationary scenario

During our daily scan of the financial news recently we noticed the clever (or coincidental) juxtaposition of two stories: one profiled an endowment that has recently decided to exclude fossil fuels from their portfolio and the other, which could be considered to lie in opposition, highlighted the increasing risks associated with reflation.

11/12/2020

Strategy Cycles, Mania and the Lessons for ESG Funds

We hosted a webinar discussing the concept of Strategy Cycles in more detail on 2 December 2020.

10/10/2020

Designing a UK DC Default Fund – The choice of active vs passive across asset classes

Whilst there are some prominent exceptions, in recent years we have observed that much of the growth being experienced in DC defaults (including Master Trusts as well as Corporate schemes) has been invested in passive/index tracking investments.

10/06/2018

Don’t Bet the Ranch: hit ratios, asymmetry and breadth

This paper discusses our framework for assessing the repeatability of performance, using the concepts of hit ratio, asymmetry and breadth.

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