The approach initiated by Ossiam's research and management team intends to obtain an optimized portfolio that includes a selection of stocks where volatility is among the lowest in the investment universe

When Alan Greenspan spoke of "market exuberance" (i.e. the lightning-fast mood swings from optimism to an investment bubble popping) wasn't he referring to what we could call a "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" syndrome?

An increasing number of pension funds are opting to invest in ‘alternative' or ‘smart beta' indices to supplement their passive management activities. Several competing methods currently exist, each with their own objectives. Analysing the risk contribution of each factor by type of approach gives investors a clearer picture of the various competing smart beta methodologies.

Investors increasingly embrace “smart beta” investing, by which we mean passively following an index in which stock weights are not proportional to their market capitalizations, but based on some alternative weighting scheme. Examples include fundamentally-weighted indices and minimum-volatility indices.

Financial market professional active on various fields for more than 20 years, Mory Doré is a key advisor of his company on portfolio and risk management for various financial institutions. In addition, he is also a trainer, teacher and columnist.