Investment Philosophy
Overview of our investment philosophy and framework
Skill based organization
Contrary to the classical structure of investment organisations, which are typically built alongside asset classes, we believe in the power of employee skills across the investment value chain. The "limits of arbitrage" show up in research, where a lot of well know return drivers lack predictive power and risk management, where alpha sources morph into beta exposures as well as in implementation, where costs and time lags sap returns.
Economic rational
We are strong believers in analyzing and understanding the economic drivers behind investments. Most sources of economic impact fall in categories of fundamental, behavioural or institutional nature. We rely heavily on high quality data, because standard sources are prone to massive revisions, which in turn mask the real economic impact behind movements in asset prices.
Asymmetric payoff structures
Capital markets theory has a strong affinity with linear mathematical concepts. This is contrary to economic reality, because asymmetries have a strong fundamental underpinning. This leads to time varying volatilities, correlations and betas. Reality bites when correlations increase rapidly and hedges refuse to work.
Multi-factor investment structure
Across our investment processes a multi-factor structure is implemented. We believe in the changing nature of economic impact on various drivers of risk and return. This is the reason for time varying factor premia, which in turn lead to changing drivers of risk.
Multi-strategy portfolio architecture
Consequently - our portfolios are multi-strategy based. This type of architecture is completely realized across all our investment solutions. With respect to multi-strategy we typically do not make any difference between mostly passive asset allocation exercises and highly active risk premia solutions.
Risk based allocation
We make use of risk models - which have been awarded several times - to ensure a joint evaluation of risk factors to get a clear view of intended and unintended exposures. Given a ongoing low return world and an increasing need of absolute return solutions, the changing nature of the risk structure of assets has to be adressed in portfolio construction.