Index Investing Beyond Perceived Limitations

一些传统上依赖的资产缺乏活力是机构投资者日益关注的问题。投资者被迫挑战自己，寻找创新的答案来满足他们的回报需求，他们正在研究他们的每一个具体投资难题，并考虑如何定制以实现他们亚博赞助欧冠的目标。一个值得注意的例子是，定制作为一种趋势与“barballing”的重新定义融合在一起，barballing是一种大多数投资者都熟悉的策略，在这种策略中，投资组合构建将大约一半的配置集中在短期战术投资上，其余一半集中在长期资产上。

用长的杠铃pursuing alpha via illiquidity premiums in private markets, the more immediate and tactical end might be considered the beta portion of a barbell strategy – an area where investors have become comfortable with indexing. With the investing landscape as complex as ever, index investments are considered a fairly reliable source of beta that don’t require much effort and tinkering. As is the case with almost everything else in today’s investment environment, however, the status quo is under scrutiny.

“我们正处在一个非常有趣的时刻，”Invesco北美客户解决方案主管Vincent de Martel说。“这是机构向指数配置中增加更多资产的单行道。由于各种原因，它一直是默认的选择——成本、透明度、对积极管理缺乏信心。但我们开始看到模型的局限性，一些裂缝开始出现。一是投资者可能没有完全意识到他们投资的每个指数的风险敞口。风险敞口是否与他们希望在区域和行业层面实现的目标一致？随着时间的推移，指数风险敞口扮演着更大的角色，机构可能希望更仔细地审视自己拥有什么以及为什么拥有它。”

Index customization

指数成交量的次级效应也开始对投资者产生不利影响。例如，每年重组的品牌指数往往有数万亿美元的重叠。这种重新平衡所必需的交易可能会违背投资者的最佳利益，更不用说收盘价问题了，这可能是指数买入或卖出压力的结果。这样的结果可能会给投资者留下一个不能反映其中证券真实经济价值的指数。

Combine what de Martel describes as the limits of indexes with the desire on the part of more and more institutional investors to use their assets to pursue specific outcomes – perhaps a certain kind of macro exposure or achieving an environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) goal – and you arrive at demand for customized indexes adapted to the needs of each investor. It’s a demand to which de Martel and the Investment Solutions Team at Invesco are responding.

“Our mission is twofold,” says de Martel. “We start by providing analytics so we and the investors can understand what they hold, breaking down an index exposure into regions, sectors, factors, ESG ratings and so on. We have all the necessary tools to facilitate that conversation. The second aspect is to create a custom approach that seeks to achieve investors’ goals. For example, right now in Europe – and increasingly in the U.S. and Asia – a lot of investors have ESG-related goals. More widespread, we’re seeing demand for factor strategies – quality, value, momentum – and how we can blend them into a custom index that allows a custom fixed income portfolio to match certain maturities, for example. We can package investment strategies and goals in an index. We think there will be a shift from first-generation index managers to a newer generation of customized indexes, and we are leading the way.”

Not the same old beta

What investors might find most attractive about adding custom indexes to a modern barbell strategy is that it’s not just an exercise in casting a net for off-the-shelf beta returns. Constructed correctly, a custom index is more the equivalent of an active quantitative strategy with the potential to add returns somewhere between market cap and pure alpha – but without the active quant fees.

“A customized index we create for an investor is more systematic in nature, like factor strategies,” says Neil Blundell, Head of Global Client Solutions, Head of Alternative Solutions, Invesco. “Invesco’s in-house Indexing team is also key to helping deliver tailored index solutions to our clients, in more cost-efficient ways than licensing data from third-party providers. They work with our clients using a systematic, rules-based transparent process that follows an index design and includes the exposures you’re looking for and how you want to achieve the desired outcome. Once we have worked with our clients to create their desired exposures, they can execute on their end, or let Invesco handle the index replication and daily activity. Because indexation is systematic, it can be extremely cost-effective, freeing up client capital to allocate to the other end of the barbell, in private markets.”

作为一个例子，布伦德尔提供了一个假设投资者，他希望接触特定地区的小型股，将规模和质量因素结合起来。通常情况下，投资者会找到一个积极的经理人，这反过来可能会倾向于小盘股或中盘股，并倾向于质量和价值。理想情况下，投资者可以达到预期的风险和回报，但成本是积极管理者从一开始就要克服的障碍。我们认为，积极管理在客户投资组合中扮演着重要角色，既可以提高回报，也可以降低风险。我们与主动/被动领域的客户合作，他们使用索引策略来补充主动管理者。这样做的好处有两个：理想情况下，投资者可以抵消成本，同时还可以将跟踪误差降低到基准水平。被动市场贝塔和基于因素的指数策略都是如此。

“By leveraging a custom index in that scenario,” says Blundell, “the investor gets consistent and specific exposure to the market exposures and or factors they desire, with the ability to look-back in time and see how the index has evolved. If an active manager is just using static factor weights, that’s probably not worth significant additional cost because that can be replicated pretty easily and systematically.”

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本文由Invesco Advisers，Inc.的业务部门Invesco Solutions于2020年12月开发。本文仅供参考，并非购买或出售任何金融工具的要约。与所有投资一样，也存在相关的固有风险。这不应被视为购买任何投资产品的建议。本文所表达的观点均为景顺投资专业人士的观点，基于当前市场情况，如有变更，恕不另行通知。