The market convulsions of the past few weeks have many investors thinking twice about owning stocks. There’s a way to stay the course in equities without abandoning comfort zones, however: Consider strategies with built-in shock absorbers.
自去年秋天以来，市场一直在增长（见图1，左图）。围绕油价崩溃的联锁问题，中国的增长放缓shifting U.S. monetary policyhave raised doubts about the vitality of the global economy and rattled nerves. And spikes in volatility tend to presage future turbulence (see chart 1, right). Four months later, and the ride continues to be rocky.
投资者可能会渴望急于出口。但历史教导了这样的回答 - 而且，确实是most efforts at market timing— have proved costly. Investors risk locking in losses and missing out on the market’s eventual recovery.
In our view at AllianceBernstein, current conditions appear to be consistent with a transient midcycle correction, rather than a prolonged recession or credit crisis that will lead to an extended bear market, as in 2008. We are unconvinced thatChina’s transitionand the disruptions in the energy market will significantly erode global economic conditions. The U.S. consumer appears strong, job growth is accelerating, and conditions in Europe and Japan look steady, if uninspiring. So whereas we expect higher volatility to persist, we don’t think it’s time to reduce exposure to equities.
Many equity investors tackle the risk issue by defaulting to traditional passive cap-weighted, index-tracking strategies and ETFs. Yet whereas passive approaches may address concerns about relative risk, they can’t help investors mitigate absolute risk when markets decline.
An allocation to a less-volatile portfolio of stocks can help investors get the long-term upside potential of equities with less of the nasty side effects of gyrating markets along the way. Granted, purely passive approaches are not wholly without risk. Most passive strategies screen strictly for low beta, with no consideration of valuation or potential for return. This characteristic can leave investors overly exposed to pricier subsets of stocks, industries or countries.
These types of strategies are particularly risky, in our view. After multiyear outperformance, for example, low-beta stocks are trading at some of their highest valuations of the past 25 years (see chart 2, right). Some would say the MSCI World Minimum Volatility index, the most commonly used proxy for low-beta stocks, has become the “safety at any price” benchmark. It currently trades at a 32 percent premium to the MSCI World index based on 12-month forward earnings and a 26 percent premium based on free cash flow.
The index is also concentrated in many so-called bond proxy sectors, such as utilities, which adds unintended interest rate sensitivity. And going with the passive flow could mean forgoing any potential for future upside in returns when investors need it most — an era in which broad market performance is likely to be more subdued.
低波动性股票有多种形状和尺寸。值得注意的是，许多具有良好商业模式的现金生成公司仍然在合理的估值上进行交易（见图2，左侧），这正是为什么我们相信多方面，积极的方法是在投资这个空间时去的方式。
积极的策略可以根据目前的基本吸引力和风险的洞察调整曝光，甚至旋转到通常与低波动性相关的扇区。例如，我们已经找到了具有大型安装基地和低资本需求的软件公司中所需的机会。在医疗保健中，即使在去年的强大的生物技术领先的优惠之后，也有很多大型多样化的药品公司with strong and stable cash flows that are still selling at discounts to the market.
我们的研究suggests that combining built-in downside defenses with traits of high quality of fundamentals — such as high return on assets, strong cash generation and disciplined balance-sheet management — can produce better risk-adjusted returns than focusing on low volatility alone. That’s because these two attributes offer complementary, tag-teaming features. High-quality stocks provide participation in bull markets, including during periods of rising interest rates (see chart 3), whereas low-beta portfolios are much better at tempering losses in market slumps.
股票市场最近的精神分裂症一直在核心。它还配备了该领域。通过在质量和稳定性之间积极交易并保持敏感性，可以通过各种环境来建立一个能够通过各种环境来度过未来波动的投资组合。鉴于我们在投资和速度周期的地方，这尤其重要。一个更漂亮的旅程，对神经更容易的旅程可以帮助保持股票投资者当湍流罢工时，并改善他们所需投资目的地的几率。
Kent Hargis is portfolio manager, strategic core equities; Chris Marx is portfolio manager, equities; and Sammy Suzuki is portfolio manager, strategic core equities; all atAllianceBernstein在纽约。
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