Given the tremendous growth of factor allocation strategies in active and passive fund management, we investigate whether either asset allocation strategies based on factors or sectors provide investors with a superior portfolio performance. Our focus is on comparing factor versus sector...

The Black-Litterman (BL) model aims to enhance asset allocation decisions by overcoming the weaknesses of standard mean-variance (MV) portfolio optimization. In this study we implement the BL model in a multi-asset portfolio context. Using an investment universe of global stock indices, bonds,...

During the recent European sovereign debt crisis, returns on EMU government bond portfoli-os experienced substantial volatility clustering, leptokurtosis and skewed returns as well as correlation spikes. Asset managers invested in European government bonds had to derive new hedging strategies to...

The sovereign debt crisis challenged investors in European government bonds to deal with volatile interest rate spreads. For managing sovereign risk, “Eurex” introduced futures contracts on Italian government bonds reflecting risks of lower rated countries. We analyze hedging strategies for...

The Black-Litterman model aims to enhance asset allocation decisions by overcoming the problems of mean-variance portfolio optimization. We propose a sample based version of the Black-Litterman model and implement it on a multi-asset portfolio consisting of global stocks, bonds, and commodity...

An essential motive for investing in commodities is to enhance the performance of portfolios traditionally including only stocks and bonds. We analyze the in-sample and out-of-sample portfolio effects resulting from adding commodities to a stock-bond portfolio for commonly implemented...