Given the tremendous growth of factor allocation strategies in active and passive fund management, we investigate whether factor or sector asset allocation strategies provide investors with a superior performance. Our focus is on comparing factor versus sector allocations as some recent...

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,...

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,...

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...

We postulate that utilizing return prediction models with fundamental, macroeconomic, and technical indicators instead of using historical averages should result in superior asset allocation decisions. We investigate the predictive power of individual variables for forecasting industry returns...

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...