The end of the year is good a time for reflection and analysis, and many investors take the opportunity to use the typically less hectic market period between mid-December and mid-January to examine their process, figure out what’s worked over the past year, and think about improvements for the next year. A key candidate for annual adjustment is the definition of the investment...

We hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving weekend with your family while we took the week off from Factor Spotlight to do the same. Today, we’re excited to introduce our latest product feature - the Experiments Manager, which is now available for all Omega Point members. The utility of Experiments revolves around portfolio rebalancing, as it allows you to evaluate different “what-if”...

Last week, we introduced Wolfe Research’s Macroeconomic Factor Overlay by highlighting some interesting macro factors that the S&P 500 is exposed to. One of the chief follow-up questions that we’ve heard is “How do I determine the potential impact on my portfolio if these macro indicators change?”Today, we’ll dig a little deeper into the Wolfe macro factor library to better...

Today, we'll take a break from our Smart Hedging series to introduce a new macroeconomic factor overlay available on the Omega Point platform, courtesy of our partners at Wolfe Research. We’ll also share our weekly market and factor updates.

Our recent series centered on Smart Hedging appears to have struck a major chord with many readers, judging by the high volume of comments and questions we’ve received since we first broached the topic. This is an area the institutional investment community has been grappling with as managers seek to strengthen their internal risk management practices while remaining competitive for...

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve discussed the benefits of using a smarter hedge basket vs. the standard and ubiquitous ETF hedges that most portfolio managers use to some extent. Most recently, we built a higher Volatility basket out of the SPY constituents, through which a manager could have made an incremental +5.68% return per year over the traditional SPY hedge.

Last week, we discussed the significant drawbacks of using the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY) as a market exposure hedge. We established that 1) the SPY hedge is wildly common among the institutional investment community (40% of the SPY’s AUM is short interest), and 2) it carries an inherent long bet on Volatility - a negative premia factor that’s down 32% over the past five years.

This week we’ll be kicking off a series on “smart hedging,” by which we aim to find a more efficient and elegant solution to hedging market exposure in your portfolio. We’ll also provide our weekly market and factor update.

As we head full force into earnings season next week, I have been thinking about the most popular topics of discussion with our clients over recent months. Last Friday’s rocky market action set the backdrop for what is sure to be an interesting week ahead, as geopolitical developments and economic news mean there will be so much to parse.

Up until now, we have evaluated companies that have been “bad actors” when it comes to ESG. For this week’s Factor Spotlight, we’ll take a look at how the institutional investment community is forcing positive change in company behavior and influencing practices that align with growing shareholder interest in broadly recognized ESG principles. We will turn the tables on the outdated...