Procyclical assets tend to rise in value when the economy is expanding and fall with the advent of a recession. Countercyclical assets are instead negatively correlated with the state of the economy. Despite the use of optimization methods, hedging, and ad hoc rebalancing techniques most...

The purpose of this case is to provide an introduction to fixed income portfolio management. In addition, the case describes the story of Bill Gross and the founding of PIMCO.Bill Gross continues to work the same schedule since joining PIMCO in 1970; a rigorous and structured workday that begins at...

We present comprehensive evidence in support of giving liquidity equal standing to size, value/growth, and momentum as investment styles, as defined by Sharpe (1992). First, we show that financial market liquidity, as identified by stock turnover, is an economically significant indicator of...

Three concepts: stochastic discount factors, multi-beta pricing and mean-variance efficiency, are at the core of modern empirical asset pricing. This chapter reviews these paradigms and the relations among them, concentrating on conditional asset-pricing models where lagged variables serve as...

In this paper, the authors construct a pipeline to benchmark Hierarchical Risk Parity (HRP) relative to Equal Risk Contribution (ERC) as examples of diversification strategies allocating to liquid multi-asset futures markets with dynamic leverage ("volatility target"). The authors use...

The belief that excess returns can be achieved by correctly timing changes in yields and/or yield spreads motivates active bond portfolio management strategies. Given the rich literature linking yield spread patterns to both the business cycle and changes in short-term interest rates, we...

We analyze optimal monetary policy and its implications for asset prices, when aggregate demand has inertia and responds to asset prices with a lag. If there is a negative output gap, the central bank optimally overshoots aggregate asset prices (asset prices are initially pushed above their...

This paper studies long-run trends in the expected return on risky assets and its relationship with the safe rate. We use time-varying return predictability regressions to estimate expected returns on two major risky asset classes – equity and housing – across 17 countries and 145 years. We...

We develop a two-layer asset pricing framework to analyze the fragility of the corporate bond market. In the model, households allocate wealth to institutional investors such as mutual funds and insurance companies. Institutional investors then allocate funds to specific assets. Equilibrium...

Economic assets can be classified into two broad categories: those earning an inherent return and those earning a fiat money return. This article shows that both are valued according to the same general principle based on GDP (a constant equal to expected long term real per capita GDP growth)...