Insights

Gold didn’t just work in 2025 — it led. Prices set repeated records and, by early September, hovered near fresh highs. Big-name allocators openly framed bullion as protection against twin risks: sticky deficits and policy shocks. Marquee ...

Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA), epitomized by the classic 60/40 portfolio, worked for decades under stable conditions. But 2022’s equity–bond sell-off showed how fragile static mixes have become as correlations shift. Old assumptions, ...

Regime-based allocation: what it actually delivers Regime-based allocation (RBA) is often pitched as a way to navigate markets without making forecasts. The promise sounds simple: don’t waste energy forecasting returns; just identify what ...

Introduction Trend-following strategies have long been considered a cornerstone of strategic allocations. They are valued for their ability to deliver diversification in moments of market stress and to provide convex payoffs when ...

July looked calm on the surface, but strange beneath it. While index levels stayed steady, the return profile flipped: lower-quality, heavily-shorted stocks surged, while defensive factors that anchor many stat-arb and equity ...

Executive Summary August 2025 was constructive for QIS. The average composite gained +0.62% MTD, with 30 of 42 (≈71%) strategies positive. Cross‑sectional dispersion narrowed to ~4.5 ppts (top minus bottom), a step tighter than July. ...

Trend following has long been part of the allocator’s toolkit. Its appeal lies in its asymmetry: modest losses in sideways markets offset by strong gains when trends persist. Yet many widely used benchmarks—typically CTA peer groups or ...

As discussed in our previous blog post, dispersion trading is a correlation trade built with options: typically sell index vol, buy single-stock vol (short correlation), or the reverse (long correlation). Depending on sizing, it can be net ...

Institutional investors and family office CIOs know that not all “absolute-return” vehicles are created equal. Hedge funds, UCITS liquid alternatives, and bank-provided QIS products can all deliver alternative strategies – but each comes ...