作为世界骨折，资产分配者正在做......没有。他们疯了吗？

The two largest economies in the world are at each other’s throats. Natural disasters vie for attention with nuclear threats. Social media posts drive market movements.

而且，不知何故，Brexit仍在发生。

地缘政治咨询公司欧亚集团已经将当前的全球环境描述为“几十年来最危险的环境”。

And BlackRock’s geopolitical risk indicator — tracking what the giant asset management firm views as the ten biggest risks to portfolios — has spiked to levels not seen since the heights of the European debt crisis.

投资者肯定似乎担心他们的投资组合可能的危险：过去秋天的500份养老金，保险公司，主权资金，禀赋和基金会，77％预测地缘政治事件对投资组合表现产生负面影响今年。

通过咨询公司的核心威胁，去年通过咨询公司的投票的公司定义的福利计划赞助商在威胁他们的投资组合面临的威胁时，纳皮特同样地引用了政治风险和地缘政治紧张局势。这些风险也被排名为2018年底由Murano Connect对100个分配人的调查中的最大问题 - 正如他们在今年早些时候在上下文首脑会议上出席的450个机构分配者投票中所做的。

根据FM Global的首席投资官员，由FM Global的首席投资官员的说法，资产所有者负责数万亿美元的退休基金，慈善资产，保险金等等 - 持续应对地缘政治风险。作为物业保险公司的管家，保险公司的170亿美元投资组合，郑田表示，他的工作是谨慎，并以长期的观点管理投资组合。这包括留住通知地缘政治事件。

It doesn’t necessarily include doing anything about them.

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“我们没有看到太多的行动from our clients — and we wouldn’t encourage it,” says Phil Nelson, director of asset allocation at NEPC.

The Boston-based consulting firm is not alone in this stance on geopolitics. Russ Ivinjack, a senior partner at Aon, notes that he and his colleagues routinely advise allocators not to react to geopolitical events by changing their portfolios. Jay Kloepfer, director of capital markets research at Callan, similarly recommends that asset owners don’t stray from their strategic asset allocation plans.

Call it long-termism, or blame it on the time it takes to get the necessary board approval for investment actions. For a number of reasons, institutional allocators and the investment consultants who advise them largely believe that when dealing with geopolitical uncertainty, often the best course of action is to stay the course.

“Part and parcel of setting up strategic asset allocation is making sure you’re able to handle the ups and downs,” Kloepfer notes. “You expect there to be geopolitical upheaval that affects markets. You build a diversified portfolio, and you try not to react.”

例如，在FM Global，Chawla表示，他避免了“Knee-Jerk”对短期价格变动的反应，而是通过评估全球事件的长期影响，以缩义正在编写的，例如哪种市场最有可能受益的措施 -或者遭受贸易限制，或者地缘政治环境如何影响货币政策。

“As investment decision makers, we have to be mindful and we have to be watchful of things that can drive markets in one direction or another,” he says. “But it can be very hard to predict which way things will go. You have to make long-term, thoughtful decisions.”

Some geopolitical events might cause markets to react sharply and spike or slide based on the latest headlines. But according to NEPC, most of these are one-off incidents — temporary storms that a well-designed portfolio can weather. A surprise election result, for example, might spur a sudden sell-off in equities — but, as Nelson points out, even the Brexit referendum only sent markets into a brief tailspin before U.K. stocks climbed back up to record heights.

“股市往往对国界新闻活动的反应，市场销售与实际影响相比，市场销售不成比例，”纳尔森说。“让市场过度反应。我们的起始偏见是说，不采取行动。“

The contrarian argument, as put forth by Kloepfer, is that when there’s upheaval, there’s opportunity.

“Not that a plan sponsor would be able to take advantage of it,” he adds.

Callan顾问指出，他没有观察到计划赞助商之间的倾向，以自己从事战术行为。因此，正如Ivinjack所指出，治理结构 - 其他障碍 - 限制资产所有者能够做出有效的战术举措。

“Most institutional investors — if they’re like a pension fund or endowment or foundation and they have a committee or board — they’re not going to be capable of executing any type of actions based on what’s going on geopolitically,” the Aon consultant notes.

另一方面，资产管理人员将在必要时迅速对市场移动事件进行反应。通过投资积极管理人员，分配者能够有效地委派纳入地缘政治风险的责任。

特别是在新兴市场，Ivinjack说，分配者依靠他们的外部管理者来评估地缘政治风险，并代表他们的战术举措。例如，如果巴西正在进行某些事情，他们希望经理积极或消极表达观点，“他解释道。

According to Kloepfer, Callan encourages clients who are concerned about volatility, geopolitical or otherwise, to hire managers that will invest in a way that’s thematic or risk-aware. Still, a “substantial portion” of client investments in U.S. public equities are in indexes — and passive is also “fairly well represented” in fixed-income.

“作为地缘政治风险的讽刺意味着最前沿的讽刺是，许多投资者都没有招聘顾问，他们代表他们可以战术，”Kloepfer说。

Instead, they are going passive — and giving up that ability to respond to geopolitics.

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然而，一种特定的地缘政治风险最终可能需要一个响应。

For all the geopolitical events that allocators deemed prudent to ignore, there’s at least one ongoing conflict that is demanding attention: the escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Blackrock的地缘政治风险仪表板跟踪的大多数其他风险都没有预计对投资组合特别危险。绘制在X轴上，测量它们对全球股票的潜在影响，这些悬停在图表的左侧附近，标记为低撞击。

The possibility of a full-blown trade war, on the other hand, is so far along the x-axis that its projected impact on global equity markets is literally off the charts.

“When we look at U.S. action pivoting away from the free-trade orthodoxy — that has the potential to have real destructive effects on the global economy,” Nelson says.

The NEPC consultant says this “clear tail risk for most equity markets” has caused his firm to dial back its overweight position on emerging markets — an asset class where the consultants would otherwise be “extremely bullish.”

但是，在贸易政策中剩下如此多的不确定性，Brexit和所有其余的，纳尔逊表示，许多Nepc的客户留在一个最能描述为“等待和看”的位置。

Maybe the U.S. and China will broker a deal.

也许@reamldonaldtrump会发现另一个发出的推文，发送市场垂直。

或许其他一些激烈的地缘政治紧张局势ill escalate into full-blown conflict.

“大多数人会同意有没有预测或只是脱唯一的事件，”纳尔森说。“那是生命的一部分 - 真的没有办法避开它们。”