“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” — Benjamin FranklinThe Brandes Institute has added a third example to Ben Franklin's famous quote about life's certainties: short-term underperformance among active managers.Over the years, Institute research has...

Passive investing, particularly in emerging markets, has become an increasingly popular means of quick, “diversified” exposure to a particular segment of the markets. Flows into passive emerging market products have been so strong that assets in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) designed to...

Collectively, Americans are woefully unprepared financially for retirement. This retirement problem actually reflects a collection of diverse issues. This paper identifies the most important ones: longevity; access; contributions; portability; behavioral mistakes; funded status; expenses; and...

InvestorLit is a subscription service providing reviews of institutional investment literature. The reviews cover a wide range of investment topics and are published on their website. Bruce Grantier, Founder of InvestorLit, is a member of the Brandes Institute Advisory Board. Members of the...

According to the International Monetary Fund, emerging markets now represent more than a third of global GDP — and are expected to grow at a faster rate than advanced economies. With such explosive growth, investors often assume that an investment strategy focused on growth would yield better...

This paper investigates the microeconomic determinants of leverage decisions by asset managers. Investment funds (the "buy side") have significantly increased their share of global capital flows in recent years. Unconventional monetary policies in advanced economies have squeezed returns while...

Question of the day: how to manage a large (or small) portfolio in low interest rate conditions, while equity markets bear significant draw-down risk? More generally, how to build an “antifragile” portfolio that can weather the most extreme market scenarios without impacting long-term...

We show that mutual funds worldwide provide substantial international exposure through their domestic holdings of multinationals. An average domestic fund's international exposure increases by 32 percentage points when we consider international corporate diversification. We find that funds with...

Using a sample of U.S. international equity mutual funds, we show that funds that hire sub-advisors abroad do not outperform. For example, funds that hire outsourced international sub-advisors underperform on a risk-adjusted basis by up to 126 bps annually, relative to funds that do not...