According to David F. Lafferty, CFA®, Senior Vice President – Chief Market Strategist at NGAM, the pressures exerted by passive indexing are forcing active managers to tackle longstanding sources of inefficiency and underperformance. By setting more appropriate fees and weeding out closet indexers, active strategies should rise in the competitive rankings.

According to Alasdair Ross Head of Investment Grade and Senior Portfolio Manager, EMEA, Global corporate portfolios offer issuer and security selection alpha potential over and above that found in US Dollar, Euro and Sterling only funds.

After testing the $1200/oz. support in early July ($1204.7/oz. on 10 July), the gold price once again took on the psychological resistance level of $1300/oz. It brushed up against this barrier once, on 18 August ($1301/oz.), but not until late in the month did it cross it at the market close!

According to Amit Kumar and Ashish Kochar, US Equity Portfolio Manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investment, investor caution on market outlook places increased focus on generating alpha. Long-short equity portfolios have the potential to generate greater alpha as individual stock returns diverge.

How clients can protect investments and maintain upside potential, explains Nannette Hechler-Fayd'herbe.