We investigate the leverage of hedge funds in the time series and cross section. Hedge fund leverage is counter-cyclical to the leverage of listed financial intermediaries and decreases prior to the start of the financial crisis in mid-2007. Hedge fund leverage is lowest in early 2009 when the...

We harvest factors—broad and persistent sources of returns—in US core fixed income in three ways. First, we take strategic over and underweight positions in certain macro factors. While strategic overweights to rates, or duration, and credit factors have historically resulted in...

Stocks with recent past high idiosyncratic volatility have low future average returns around the world. Across 23 developed markets, the difference in average returns between the extreme quintile portfolios sorted on idiosyncratic volatility is -1:31% per month, after controlling for world...

We examine the factor exposures of several popular market capitalization indexes and how they vary over time. We find that most market capitalization weight indexes are effectively exposed to only two or three factors, with value and momentum being increasingly dominant. We find that the...

We develop a liability driven investment framework that incorporates downside risk penalties for not meeting liabilities. The shortfall between the asset and liabilities can be valued as an option which swaps the value of the endogenously determined optimal portfolio for the value of the...

We construct fixed income portfolios for sovereign bonds and corporate bonds with sustainable insights. The climate methodology for sovereign bonds can be applied as an overlay on any benchmark and tilts towards sovereigns more prepared with the climate transition and away from those which are...

We introduce a methodology to estimate common real estate returns and cycles across public and private real estate markets. We first place REIT indices and direct real estate — NCREIF appraisal-based and transaction-based indices (NPI and NTBI) — on a comparable basis by adjusting for...

Portfolios with positive exposures to rewarded risk premiums have historically exhibited high average returns adjusting for their market betas. As capital allocated to such strategies increases, the excess returns of these portfolios should decrease. We compute the flows from low-return to...

Stocks with large increases in call implied volatilities over the previous month tend to have high future returns while stocks with large increases in put implied volatilities over the previous month tend to have low future returns. Sorting stocks ranked into decile portfolios by past call...