Cam Harvey looks at the yield curve today through the lens of his 1986 pioneering work on yield-curve inversions and their foreshadowing of economic downturns.

The business case for diversity is compelling, but the investment case for diversity is less clear-cut. We suggest, therefore, that investors who seek to promote diversity and its business benefits combine diversity with known drivers of excess returns.

The biggest failure in investment management—the gap between the returns realized by the investor and the returns earned by the strategy or fund the investor owns—typically remains in the shadows with the glare of the spotlights focused on alpha. Smart beta is no exception. We propose two ways to reframe the client performance review that we believe will result in better long-term outcomes.

Factor investing, an investment approach which targets specific stock characteristics such as value or momentum, is becoming a stronghold of investor portfolios.

An alternative risk premia strategy that relies on robust factors within a liquid, transparent, and disciplined framework has the potential to improve the long-term return prospects of traditional portfolios and to reduce their downside risk.

Embracing a disciplined approach to rebalancing can lead to better long-term investment outcomes. Overcoming the natural tendency to wait-and-see before repositioning our portfolios can be a difficult, but worthy, goal for investors to pursue. Advisors can help investors surmount this and other behavioral hurdles by adopting a systematic rebalancing approach that effectively institutionalizes contrarian investment behavior.

Evidence shows that the yield-curve slope and equity returns provide signals of similar direction in the economy, allowing investors to nowcast with relative confidence. Today, those signals indicate that several developed markets—in particular, Japan, Germany, and the United States—are ominously close to entering a correction phase.

A rational analysis of the emerging markets affirms our belief that now is the time to buy, not sell. The panic being peddled by pundits today is simply not justified.

Traditional index funds match market performance and have negligible trading costs with low tracking error—or do they? Not actually—they routinely buy after high price appreciation and sell after high price depreciation. They also have significant trading costs from adding and deleting stocks. We show how index providers can construct better-performing indices that are less prone to performance chasing and have lower turnover.

Investors and their advisors must be alert to managing both pre-tax and after-tax alpha in order for investors to realize the highest possible return from their taxable portfolios. Increasingly, the opportunities to accomplish both goals are within reach of investors through, for example, tax-advantaged smart beta strategies and tax-efficient vehicles such as ETFs.

Although a naïve comparison appears to favor the integrating approach to multi-factor strategy construction, after taking into account both quantitative and qualitative considerations, many investors—those seeking transparency, diversification, minimal governance oversight, and low fees—may find mixing is a more sensible choice.

With sky-high valuations in the US stock market, and what we believe is a tech bubble that has dangerous implications for other areas of the market, we suggest four actions investors can take now to avoid the inevitable bursting of the bubble, and which will likely benefit their portfolios’ long-term performance potential.

By combining a tilt toward companies that display financial discipline and that embrace corporate diversity with the return engine of a fundamentally weighted portfolio, we believe investors in environmental, social, and governance (ESG)–related strategies have the opportunity to earn superior long-term risk-adjusted returns.

Assessing our portfolios’ performance is a necessary activity, but by being aware that measurement over shorter time horizons is dominated by noise, we can better resist the natural human instinct to “do something”—typically selling the underperforming investment at exactly the wrong time—if near-term performance falls below expectations.

When the value trade goes global, investors are poised to benefit. Evidence from the international equity, bond, currency, and commodity markets indicates that the value premium is a global phenomenon that can offer important portfolio diversification. However, the devil is in the details: we argue that the successful implementation of global value strategies critically depends on an economically motivated design.

While somewhat at odds with today’s big-data, warp-speed approach to life and work, thoughtful craftsmanship—the product design and implementation elements that are tangible, measurable, and impactful—can create positive, persistent results in portfolio performance.

Beware the consequences of assuming that elevated CAPE ratios are here to stay, but if they are the "new normal," low future returns are likely to be the "new normal" as well.

Part 3 Building Portfolios: Diversification without the Heartburn The wisdom of diversifying investor portfolios across a wide range of asset classes is indisputable. But diversifying client portfolios beyond mainstream stocks and bonds comes with challenges, starting with clients’ unfamiliarity with diversifying asset classes and a propensity for clients to regret diversifying when results disappoint.

A 10-year US Treasury note yielding just little above 2% does feel expensive. Yet we should not be misled by appearances. Our research shows that, contrary to common wisdom, Treasury bonds are only moderately overvalued. All in all, bonds are not as unattractive as a simple historical comparison of their yields may suggest.

Momentum is one of the most compelling factors in theoretical long–short paper portfolios, but live results of momentum strategies fall short of theoretical returns. Thoughtful implementation, a careful sell discipline, and an avoidance of stocks with stale momentum can narrow the gap between paper and live results.

If we think of expected return as the likeliest long-term “destination” of our investment portfolio, we can then think of risk as the uncertainty in the “journey” to that destination. Advisors serve their clients well by helping them understand the many paths that journey can take, and by establishing a plan of action (or inaction!) for when shortfalls inevitably occur.

Starting conditions matter. Today’s investment yields impact future realized returns. But many still rely on past returns to estimate future returns. Our online Asset Allocation Interactive tool gives you the information you need to look ahead, not just back.

Our headquarters in Newport Beach is only 50 miles from the Hollywood studios, although the drive can take up to two hours in rush-hour traffic. But far more than traffic separates the studios’ world from ours.

We demonstrate a smart beta that produces positive excess returns from sustainably faster growth in EPS. This simple, systematic strategy represents a significant improvement from today’s growth indices that fail to produce faster growth in EPS and have provided negative excess returns.

The first half of 2017 is shaping up to be unequivocally brutal for value-oriented rebalancing strategies. Wired to avoid pain, we humans know it’s very tempting to ask whether a model or philosophy is broken, especially the moment it dashes expectations.

When investors rely on any particular model all the time—and CAPE is often that model—fatigue inevitably sets in. We believe that a better approach for meeting future spending needs is to blend portfolios based on different models of return expectations.

The Trump bump reveals market expectations of continuing public policies prioritizing stability, inhibiting creative destruction, depressing yields and wage growth, and inflating a profits bubble. If instead, the Administration delivers reforms that allow creative destruction, invigorate growth and raise returns to capital and wages, then the lofty profits of corporate incumbents will be at risk.

An analysis of five international stock markets indicates that published findings of a correlation between US stock returns and the political party in the White House are spurious, highlighting the importance of caution in interpreting historical investment data.

Our analysis of three first-generation smart beta strategies shows factor-replicated portfolios are ineffective substitutes for their smart beta counterparts, exhibiting poorer performance, high turnover, and low capacity.

In 2016, Research Affiliates published a series of articles challenging the “smart beta” revolution. We pointed out that, while there is merit in many factor tilt and smart beta strategies, performance chasing in these strategies—buying the popular outperforming strategies whose relative valuations are at extremely high levels—can be just as dangerous as performance chasing in other realms of asset management.

Macroeconomic volatility is a useful tool for contrarian investors who are seeking fair value in an equity market characterized by continually rising valuations.

In a series of articles we published in 2016, we show that relative valuations predict subsequent returns for both factors and smart beta strategies in exactly the same way price matters in stock selection and asset allocation.

It may not be my money, but it is my job. — Charles Ellis in Investment Policy: How to Win the Loser's Game

A quarter-century before Brexit came “Black Wednesday.” On Wednesday evening, September 16, 1992, the British government announced its exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, prompting a dramatic devaluation of the British pound. Renowned hedge fund manager George Soros’ legendary bet against the pound in 1992 and his $1 billion profit on Black Wednesday defines for many the swashbuckling style of a global macro trader.

In their latest piece, Rob Arnott and Brandon Kunz of Research Affiliates take a look at how the rare combination of exceptional valuation levels, depressed currencies, and powerful price and economic momentum should encourage long-term investors to “throw their hats” into the emerging markets rink.

Mean reversion is as applicable to trading costs as it is to valuation. Today’s costs to trade are at 56-year historical lows; they are due to rise soon. Now is the time to position your portfolio ahead of expected higher costs to trade and lower equity prices.

Now’s the time to get real. Now’s the time, in a world of paltry bond yields and meager dividends, to make an honest assessment of your portfolio’s long-term expected return.