Moving from relative to absolute

Balance skill with market risk It is crucial in sub-advisory investment management to pick managers that can offer clients the highest likelihood of strong consistent returns. While great care is always taken over assessing managers’ philosophy and process (in order to build up an idea of potential future performance), less time is typically spent on ensuring that the manager has the opportunity to apply that skill in as many areas as possible. Last month, we addressed how relaxing the long-only constraint on equity portfolios can enable managers to fully express their negative, as well as positive, views on a stock. This may enable skilful managers to increase the target returns per unit of risk (indicated by a higher information ratio). This month we examine new approaches which can be taken in the global fixed income and currency market that provide investors with access to manager skill while seeking to mitigate market risks.