Month: April 2020

CAIA Survey Results – The attraction of Alternative Investments and future trends

/ Kiwi Investor / 17 Comments

Alternative Investments have doubled as a share of global asset markets since 2003.

They have moved from 6% or $4.8 trillion of the global investment universe in 2003 to over $13.4 trillion, or 12% of the global investment universe in 2018.

 

CAIA Association members expect alternatives to grow to between 18% and 24% of the global investible universe by 2025.

Further growth is expected, based on the combination of very low interest rates, the shortfall in superannuation accounts to meet future retirement obligations, the maturing of emerging markets, and structural shifts in capital formation e.g. companies are remaining private for longer.

Private equity and venture capital are expected to benefit most from the future growth in alternative investments.

Private debt and real asset allocations are also expected to grow.

Although future growth in liquid alternatives is expected, hedge fund growth is anticipated to trail.

 

Manager selection is key to success within the alternatives universe given the dispersion in manager performance.

 

These are the key findings of the recently published CAIA Association report, The Next Decade of Alternative Investments: From Adolescence to Responsible Citizenship.

The assessments and predictions of the survey are based on the results of a comprehensives survey of over 1,000 CAIA members.

CAIA = Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, the Association website can be accessed here.

 

The Attraction of Alternatives

CAIA members expect alternatives to grow to between 18 – 24% of the global investible universe by 2025, as highlighted in the following graph from the CAIA report.

Percentage of Global Investible Market CAIA

Of note, Retail investors have around 5% of their investments in alternatives, institutional investors have substantially higher allocations.

This is significant, it is increasingly becoming apparent that continuing to invest in cash, fixed income, and developed market sharemarket alone is unlikely to generate the returns necessary to meet future retirement obligations.

Those saving for retirement have several options, including:

  1. Reducing their expectations as to the standard of living they wish to have in retirement;
  2. Increase their level of savings = work longer and/or forgo current consumption for a higher level of consumption in retirement; and
  3. Find new sources of returns.

 

From a portfolio perspective, the introduction of alternative investments, including hedge funds, liquid alternatives, private equities, and real assets can provide new sources of returns.

Investing outside of the developed markets, with appropriate exposures to emerging market currencies, fixed income, and equities can also provide new sources of return for many portfolios. The current environment offers several potential opportunities outside the developed and traditional fixed income markets.

 

In relation to alternatives, they are generally added to portfolios for two primary reasons:

  • Enhance Returns e.g. private equity and venture capital
  • Diversification – e.g. hedge funds and liquid alternative to reduce portfolio declines at time of severe sharemarket market fails as currently experienced.

Inflation hedging and yield enhancements are other reasons for allocated toward alternatives.

The following graph presents the rationale for investing in alternatives based on the CAIA Members surveyed.

Rationale for investing in Alternatives CAIA

 

As an indication to how much institutional investors have invested in alternatives, US Pension Funds increased their allocation to alternatives from 8.7% to 15.7% over the period 2001 and 2009.

Since 2009 they have increased their alternative allocations to 27%. The largest allocations include Private Equity, Real Estate, and hedged funds.

 

Interestingly, more than 50% of CAIA Association Members expect to have a greater allocation to private equity and venture capital in 2025 than they current hold.

According to CAIA, this is consistent with a Prequin survey that most investors are likely to continue to grow allocations to private equity and private debt over the next five years.

 

Manager Selection

As the Graph below from the CAIA report highlights there is a wide dispersion of manager performance in a number of strategies, particularly private equity, venture capital, infrastructure, and hedge funds.

By contrast, manager performance dispersion within public equities (listed markets) and global fixed income managers is relatively tight.

Therefore, avoiding underperforming managers is a key success factor when investing in alternatives.

Manager Performance Dispersion CAIA

 

Future Trends

Hedge Funds and Liquid Alternatives

Portfolio diversification was the key rationale for including hedge funds, managed futures, and liquid alternatives in a portfolio amongst more than half the CAIA members surveyed.

Lessening the impact of severe equity markets declines on portfolios was a motivating factor “over 92% believe that hedge funds will outperform global equity during times of weakening stock prices.”

As the report emphasises, “This script played out dramatically in the first quarter of 2020 and is reinforced through history: volatility of returns on hedge fund indices is approximately half that of global stock market indices.”

Assets managed by hedge funds has plateaued over recent years. “Among CAIA Members, two-thirds of those who allocate to hedge funds have an allocation of less than 10%, while more than one-quarter have an allocation exceeding 15%………….. only 37% of CAIA Members who currently allocate to hedge funds expect to have a higher allocation in 2025 than they do today.”

Growth has been experienced across liquid alternatives. Assets allocated to liquid alternatives have grown to $900 billion, up from $200 billion in 2008. Liquid alternatives have grown from 12% of hedge fund assets in 2008 to over 22% today.

With the growth in liquid alternatives, which tend to be more transparent, provide greater levels of liquidity, and cheaper fees compared to hedged funds, it is of little surprise that hedge fund fees have declined as noted in the CAIA report.

 

A comparison of the performance and characteristics of liquid alternatives compared to hedged funds, undertaken by Vanguard, can be found here.

 

Private Equity and Venture Capital

As noted above, more than 50% of CAIA Association Members expect to have a greater allocation to private equity and venture capital in 2025.

The change in capital markets, with companies remaining private for longer, and the increased globalisation of capital are underlying trends expected to boost the investment into these types of strategies.

By way of example, the CAIA report highlight that in “2012 over two-thirds of venture capital investments were made in North American companies. By the end of 2016, over 45% of portfolio companies were in Asia, while only one-third of investments were made in North American firms.”

The growing trend of Emerging Market company’s requirements for capital will see an increased asset allocation to these regions by private equity and venture capital.

Considerations in determining an optimal private equity portfolio allocation are covered in this Kiwi Investor Blog Post.

 

Real Assets

The survey highlighted that there are several reasons for investing in real assets. By way of example, Real estate and infrastructure are invested in for the following reasons, offering diversification, an inflation hedge, and as a source of income.

The report noted that investments in real assets has increased from $2.7 trillion to $4.3 trillion from 2004 to 20188.

Those CAIA Members who invest in real estate and infrastructure, the majority have an allocation of less than 10% of assets. However, nearly one-third have an allocation above 10% and nearly 90% expect to have an allocation in 2025 that is greater than or equal to what they currently hold.

 

The benefits of real assets are noticeable in different economic environments, like stagflation and stagnation, and particularly for those investments where objectives are linked to inflation. In a previous Post I provide an outline of the characteristics of different real assets and the benefits they bring to a Portfolio.

 

The CAIA Report has a very good case study on climate change and real assets, highlighting the impact of increased Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) integration within investor portfolio will in their view be transformative for the real asset classes e.g. Real Estate and Infrastructure carbon-neutrality and stranded assets within the Natural Resources sector.

 

There is also an interesting section on Private Debt, which has experienced a dramatic increase in assets, reflecting historically low interest rates and regulatory changes that have caused banks to reduce lending to risker parts of the economy. Allocations to private debt are expected to grow.

 

The CAIA also unveil a four-point call to action for the industry:

  1. Commit to Education
  2. Embrace Transparency
  3. Advocate Diversification
  4. Democratise but protect

 

The CAIA report is well worth reading.

 

Happy investing.

Please see my Disclosure Statement

 

Global Investment Ideas from New Zealand. Building more Robust Investment Portfolios.

Sharemarket crashes – what works best in minimising losses, market timing or diversification?

/ Kiwi Investor / 12 Comments

The best way to manage periods of severe sharemarket declines, as recently experienced, is to have a diversified portfolio, it is impossible to time these episodes.

A 2018 paper by AQR evaluated the effectiveness of diversifying investments during sharemarket drawdowns using nearly 100 years of market data.

They analysed the potential benefits and costs of shifting away from equities, including into investments that are diversifying (i.e. are lowly correlated to equities) and investments that provide a market hedge (i.e. expected to outperform in bad times).

To diversify a portfolio AQR recommends adding return sources that make money on average and have a low correlation to equities i.e. their returns are largely independent of the performance of sharemarkets.

They argue that diversification should be true both in normal times and when most needed: during tough periods for equities.

Furthermore, as AQR emphasis, “diversification is not the same thing as a hedge.” Although “hedges”, e.g. Gold, may make money at times of sharemarket crashes, there is a cost, investments with better hedging characteristics tend to do worse on average over the longer term.

Therefore, alternative investments are more compelling relative to the traditional asset classes in diversifying a portfolio, they provide the benefits of diversification and on average over time their returns tend to keep up with sharemarket returns.

 

The analysis highlights that the funding source can matter just as much as the new diversifying investment. Funding from equities reduces drawdown losses, however, longer term returns are on average lower when compared to funding the allocation proportionally from the 60/40 equity/fixed income split.

 

Portfolio diversification is harder to achieve in practice than in theory. It involves adding new “risks” to a portfolio. Risks that have their own return profile largely independent of other investment strategies within a Portfolio.

Unfortunately, portfolio diversification does not eliminate the risk of experiencing investment losses.

 

Any new lowly correlated investment should be vigorously assessed and well understood before added to a portfolio.

The success of which largely rests with manager selection.

 

A summary of the AQR analysis is provided below, first, the following section discusses the challenges and characteristics of achieving portfolio diversification.

 

The challenges and characteristics of Portfolio Diversification

AQR advocate that diversification is a better solution to mitigating the pain of severe sharemarket falls than trying to time markets.

Specifically, they recommend adding return sources that make money on average and have a low correlation to equities.

 

Lowly correlated assets can be tremendously valuable additions to a portfolio.

Lowly correlated means returns that are not influenced by the other risks in the portfolio e.g. hedge funds and liquid alternative strategy returns are largely driven by factors other than sharemarket and fixed income returns.

Therefore, although diversifying strategies can lose money in large sharemarket drawdowns, this does not mean they are not portfolio diversifiers. The point being, is that on “average” they do not suffer when equities do.

Unfortunately, portfolio diversification does not eliminate the risk of experiencing investment losses.

 

In contrast, a hedge is something you would expect to do better than average exactly when other parts of the portfolio are suffering. Although this sounds attractive, hedges come with a cost. This is discussed further below.

 

Adding diversifying strategies to any portfolio means adding new risks.

The diversifying strategies will have their own risk and return profile and will suffer periods of underperformance – like any investment.

Therefore, as AQR note, implementing and maintaining portfolio diversification is harder in practice than in theory.

Portfolio diversification in effect results in adding new risks to a portfolio to make it less risky.  Somewhat of a paradox.

This can be challenging for some to implement, particularly if they only view the risk of an investment in isolation and not the benefits it brings to the total portfolio.

Furthermore, adding more asset classes does not equal more diversification, as outlined in this Post.

 

Background

Most portfolios are dominated by sharemarket risk. Even a seemingly diversified balanced portfolio of 60% equities and 40% fixed income is dominated by equity risk, since equities tend to be a much higher-risk asset class. Although equities have had high average returns historically, they are subject to major drawdowns such that the overall “balanced” portfolio will suffer too.   The Balance Portfolio is riskier than many appreciated, as outlined in this Post.

 

A major sharemarket drawdown is characterised as a cumulative fall in value of 20% or more. Recent examples include the first quarter of 2020, the Global Financial Crisis (2008/09) and Tech Bust (1999/2000). Based on the AQR analysis of almost 100 year of data, drawdowns worse than 20% have happened 11 times since 1926 — a little over once per decade on average. The average peak-to-trough has been -33%, and on average it took 27 months to get back to pre-drawdown levels (assuming investors stayed invested throughout – there is considerable research that indicates they don’t stay the course and earn less than market returns over the investment cycle).

 

AQR’s analysis highlights that using market valuations as a signal to time market drawdowns has not always been fruitful. Market valuations has rarely been a good signal to tactically change a portfolio to avoid a market drawdowns.

However, it is worth noting AQR are not against the concept of small tactical tilts within portfolios based on value or other signals such as momentum, best expressed as “if market timing is a sin, we have advocated to “sin a little””.

Nevertheless, market timing is not a “panacea” for large sharemarket drawdowns.

 

Diversification Benefits

The AQR analysis highlights that diversification outside of equities and fixed income can benefit portfolios, for example the inclusion of Style strategies (long/short risk premium across several different asset classes) and Trend following. Both of which are found to be lowly correlated to equities and provide comparable returns over market cycles.

Interestingly, the benefits of diversification vary from where the source of funds is taken to invest into the diversifying strategies.

AQR look at the impact on the portfolio of making an allocation from a 60/40 portfolio to the diversifying strategies. They consider two approaches:

  1. Funding the allocation all equities; and
  2. Funding from a combination of equities and fixed income, at a 60/40 ratio.

They evaluate a 10% allocation from the funding source to the new investments and consider both the impact on returns during equity drawdowns as well as the impact on returns on average over the entire 1926–2017 period.

The analysis highlights that the funding source can matter just as much as the new diversifying investment.

Funding from equities reduces the drawdown losses, however there is a trade-off, longer term returns are on average lower when compared to funding the allocation proportionally to the 60/40 equity / fixed income split.

When allocating to other traditional asset classes as a means of diversification e.g. Cash and Fixed Income, there is also a trade-off between a lower portfolio drawdown and lower average returns over time.

 

Therefore, alternatives offer a more compelling case relative to the traditional asset classes in diversifying a portfolio, given they provide the benefits of diversification and on average over time their returns tend to keep up with sharemarket returns.

 

The Cost of Hedging

As noted above Hedging is different to adding diversifying strategies to a portfolio.

Hedges may include assets such as Gold, defensive strategies – which hedge against market falls, and Put Option strategies.

The AQR analysis found that over the past 30 years the defensive strategies provided positive returns on average during sharemarket drawdowns and almost no periods with meaningful negative performance.

This is attractive for investors who are purely focused on lessening the negative impacts of sharemarket drawdowns.

However, there is a trade-off – “the strategies that are more defensively orientated tend to have lower average returns.”

The cost of avoiding the sharemarket drawdown is lower portfolio performance over time.

 

AQR Conclude

AQR conclude “As with everything in investing, there is no perfect solution to addressing the risk of large equity market drawdowns. However, we find using nearly a century of data that diversification is probably (still) investors’ best bet. This is not to say that diversification is easy.”

“Investors should analyze the return and correlation profiles of their diversifying investments to prepare themselves for the range of outcomes that they should expect during drawdowns and also over the long term.”

 

 

Happy investing.

Please see my Disclosure Statement

 

Global Investment Ideas from New Zealand. Building more Robust Investment Portfolios.

 

Hedge Funds vs Liquid Alternatives – both bring diversification benefits to a traditional portfolio says Vanguard

/ Kiwi Investor / 6 Comments

Vanguard recently concluded that investors should carefully consider liquid alternatives and hedge funds.

Their research highlighted that they both bring portfolio diversification benefits to a traditional portfolio of equities and fixed income.

They suggest “that liquid alternatives are often viable options for investors who value the regulatory protections, ease of access, and lower costs they provide”, when compared to hedge funds.

Although hedge funds and liquid alternatives deliver valuable portfolio diversification benefits, “it is crucial that investors assess funds on a standalone basis, as the benefits from any alternative investment allocation will be dictated by the specific strategy of the manager(s).”

The most important feature in gaining the benefits of hedge funds and liquid alternatives is manager selection.

This reflects the wide dispersion of returns and investment approaches within the categories of hedge fund and liquid alternatives.

 

The Vanguard Report undertakes an extensive analysis and comparison of the performance and characteristics of hedge funds and liquid alternatives.

The comparison of hedge funds and liquid alternative is particularly useful to those new to the subject.

For the more technically advanced, there is an in-depth performance analysis comparing the drivers of performance between hedge funds and liquid alternative strategies. Vanguard ran a seven-factor model and a customised regression model to identify the drivers of returns.

 

Benefits of Hedge Funds and Liquid Alternatives

Vanguard’s analysis highlights that hedge funds and liquid alternatives provide diversification benefits to a traditional portfolio of equities and fixed income. As noted above, capturing these benefits is heavily reliant on manager selection.

It is important to note that the diversification benefits of the different hedge funds and liquid alternatives strategy types vary over time, they have time varying sensitivity to equity markets and fixed income.

It is also worth highlighting that hedge fund and liquid alternative strategies do not provide a “hedge” to equity markets and fixed income markets.

Therefore they do not always provide a positive return when equity markets fall. Albeit, they do not decline as much at times of market crisis, as we have recently witnesses. Technically speaking their drawdowns (losses) are smaller relative to equity markets.

As evidenced in the Graph below provided by Mercer.

Mercer drawdown graph

 

Blending Alternative investment strategies can smooth the ride

Vanguard note that an additional layer of portfolio diversification can be attained by combining different hedge funds and alternative strategies.

Vanguard’s analysis suggested global macro (including managed futures) and the market neutral strategies are the best diversifiers when combined with other hedge fund and liquid alternative strategies.

Their research highlighted that combining multi-strategy hedge fund and liquid alternatives with a few other strategy types provided additional portfolio diversification benefits.

Again they highlight the importance of undertaking fund-by-fund basis analysis to better capture these diversification benefits – i.e. manager selection is important

 

Framework for Manager Selection

Vanguard suggest a framework for manager selection

  1. Identify your investment objective for including hedge funds and liquid alternatives. Investors have an array of objectives, which may include return enhancement, portfolio diversification and risk reduction, and inflation protection.
  2. Before selecting a manager determine a suitable strategy type(s). This is undertaken in consideration of investment objective(s) and any constraints. This could take into consideration risk and fee budgets, tolerance for level of leverage, and operational implementation issues. Ideally you would want to identify a number of strategy types so as to gain the diversification benefits from having a blended investment solution.
  3. Undertake manager selection within the strategy types. Undertake research as to the benefits of a particular manager and their ability to consistently deliver return outcomes consistent with the overarching investment objectives within the strategy type.
  4. Maintain a policy of regular review and monitoring of the manager and strategies in meeting desired investment objectives.

 

Liquid Alternatives are often the Prudent Option

The report highlights that investors will place varying degrees of value on the relative benefits of hedge funds and liquid alternatives.

Vanguard note that liquid alternatives may provide valuable portfolio construction benefits for investors who are not interested in undertaking the additional due diligence required for, or paying the costs associated with, investing in hedge funds.

They conclude that liquid alternatives maybe a viable option. Compared to hedge funds liquid alternative often have:

  • Lower fee structure that are easier to understand;
  • Greater transparency of underlying holdings; and
  • Greater liquidity i.e. easier access to getting your money back.

 

Performance Comparison

The Vanguard analysis reveals that hedge funds have performed better than liquid alternatives. They have also performed better on a risk adjusted basis.

However, the dispersion of returns between hedge fund managers is greater.

Vanguard undertook extensive performance analysis of hedge funds and liquid alternative returns, using factor analysis. Vanguard ran a seven-factor model and a customised regression model.

This analysis highlighted that liquid alternatives have more consistent factor exposures than hedge funds. Their returns are driven more by market factors such as value, momentum, low volatility, credit, quality, and liquidity.

Different factors drove the returns of different liquid alternative strategies – thus the diversification benefits of combining different strategy types.

Conversely, hedge funds are driven more by manager skill, returns are less sensitive to market factor returns.

 

To Conclude

Liquid alternatives provide an exposure to more “generic” hedge fund strategies – “hedge fund beta” exposures that have been found to be relatively stable over time. The market sensitivities vary across the different strategy types.

Investing in hedge funds, provides access to more unique return sources (alpha). Albeit this is harder to identify. Therefore, manager selection is even more important, given the larger dispersion of returns amongst hedge fund strategies and managers.

However, both the hedge fund alpha and the liquid alternative beta can provide diversification benefits to a traditional portfolio. Therefore, both can play a role in a portfolio.

Individual preferences and constraints will largely drive allocations to each.

Appropriate due diligence and focus on returns after fees will increase the likelihood of capturing the portfolio diversification benefits.

Manager selection is key.

 

Stay safe and healthy.

 

Happy investing.

Please see my Disclosure Statement

 

Global Investment Ideas from New Zealand. Building more Robust Investment Portfolios.

 

We will get through this – coronavirus

/ Kiwi Investor / Leave a comment

One of the better discussions available on the coronavirus is the CFA Institute interview between Laurence B. Siegel and Andrew “Drew” Senyei, MD.

The most important point to take away is the concluding remark “the advances in medical knowledge and molecular biology, especially in the last decade, and with the full focus of the world on this one challenge — we will get through this.”

The discussion is wide ranging and will help in providing clarity on several issues e.g. the importance of testing, how the virus impacts on the body, and the trade-off between preventing or slowing the spread of the disease at all costs versus the cost on the economy and people’s mental health, including what testing is required to get people back to work.

 

The interview begins by acknowledging that although our knowledge of the virus is increasing there is still lots to learn about it. It is evident that this coronavirus is different from previous coronaviruses.

One important unknown is how lethal it is. This relates to the case fatality rate (CFR). This is the number of people who die of the disease, expressed as a percentage of the number of people who have it.

As you may be aware, there are a number of problems in measuring this currently:

  • More testing is needed to know how many people who have had it, especially asymptomatic patients – tested positive for the virus but showed no symptoms.
  • The reporting of deaths has also been problematic, did they die because of the virus or was there an underlying ailment e.g. cancer or heart disease. The difference between died with and died from.

The best estimate currently is that the CFR of the coronavirus is higher than the flu, but it is unlikely to be as high as SARS.

Also, the CFR for the coronavirus is likely to fall as further testing is undertaken, this was the experience with SARS.

The experience on the cruise ship, The Diamond Princess, provides an insight into the likely CFR, and interestingly, over half those tested were asymptomatic. This is discussed in more detail in the article.

The issue of incomplete statistics is highlighted in comparing the outcomes between Italy and South Korea. This comes down to the level of testing and the variations in the way different countries are testing.

Social distancing is having a positive impact. Particularly from protecting the health care system. Ideally, we want “the density of new cases presenting in any geographic area at any given time to be as low as possible and over as long a time period as possible to prevent a surge on the health care system.”

There is a great discussion around the issues with testing. There are a lot of variables.  At the risk of sounding repetitive we need lots of testing, “We need to know how much of the disease is out there so we can have the health care resources and physicians to respond to that surge, where and if it occurs.”

 

Economic Trade-off

The latter half of the article covers the issue of the trade-off between preventing or slowing the spread of the disease at all costs versus the cost on the economy and people’s mental health.

The argument being, should we ease up relatively quickly on policies that discourage work and income and social interaction, otherwise we will severely injure the economic life.

Is there an optimum or balance between the two extremes?

 

Initially, given the unknows, erring on the side of caution would appear appropriate.

Nevertheless, there is an argument for considering “a rational middle ground and that is: We have to first understand if this is peaking. And remember when you look at new case rates, you’re actually lagging by two weeks.”

Understanding more about the virus will help in getting the economy back up and running.  More testing is needed.

“I would look at those [new case rates], and then at hospitalizations and intensive care utilization, and see if that’s peaking because that is the most pressing problem. Then I would look at the rates by population density and see where the wave is happening more locally and usher resources there.”

The discussion comes back to more but different testing, to get a better sense of who’s had the infection, who’s over it, and who’s protected at least for a while.

This is an interesting discussion and highlights a likely path to getting people back to work. .

The key is to identify those individuals already immune and not likely to get infected or infect others back to work.

Protecting the elderly is important, therefore it is suggested “to look at the density of the elderly and make sure resources are adequate for that particular region — not just equipment and supplies, but personnel.”

Senyei concludes “I would invest really heavily in the basic biology and in vaccine development which is two years out. I think you’re going to need a vaccine and you’ll probably need a new vaccine like you do for the flu every year. This virus will mutate.”

“Now all that takes money, time, and coordination — but people are working on it and I think, if we did that, we could sort of get back to the economy being an economy.”

As highlighted above, they conclude by acknowledging that we will get through this.

 

Stay safe and healthy.

 

Happy investing.

Please see my Disclosure Statement

 

Global Investment Ideas from New Zealand. Building more Robust Investment Portfolios.