Strategic allocation

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Can hedge funds play the role?

How should investors select the most suitable types of hedge funds for specific roles? Members of our Investment Strategy & Solutions Group offer a simple and intuitive framework that can help.

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2025-03-31
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Picking the right building blocks for a climate-aware portfolio

For asset owners integrating climate change into their multi-asset portfolios, members of our Investment Strategy & Solutions Group offer five important insights.

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2025-04-30
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A blueprint for building climate-aware multi-asset portfolios

Members of our Investment Strategy & Solutions Group take a deep dive on the issues asset owners should consider when choosing climate-aware portfolio building blocks, from the evolving opportunity set to the active/passive decision.

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2026-03-31
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Insurance Quick Takes: What's next for CLO risk charges?

Tim Antonelli, Head of Insurance Multi-Asset Strategy and Portfolio Manager, breaks down the impact of recent US insurance regulatory developments on the CLO universe, and why this matters for U.S. insurers. 

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2025-03-31
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Using defensive equities in a return-seeking portfolio: A factor framework for corporate plans

Members of our LDI and Fundamental Factor teams share their views on defensive equity investments, including their role in a plan's portfolio and the current environment for defensive factors.

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2025-03-31
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How to nurture a growth mindset in a higher-yielding landscape

In a higher-yield world, can fixed income deliver meaningful growth? John Mullins, Supriya Menon and Alex King explore how high-yield bonds may offer a powerful opportunity for growth - as well as a cushion against uncertainty.

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2025-03-31
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Managing currency exposure in multi-asset portfolios: how to weigh the trade-offs and impact

Nick Samouilhan, Head of Multi-Asset Strategy – APAC, evaluates the trade-offs of different currency hedging approaches and offers a novel framework for gauging their potential portfolio impact. 

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2026-02-28
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Top 5 fixed income ideas for 2024

With central banks set to pivot to accommodative policy, and elevated yields still prevailing, we think fixed income offers compelling opportunities. Here we share our top five ideas.

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2025-02-28
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Top of Mind: The allocator’s checklist for 2024 and beyond

Head of Multi-Asset Strategy Adam Berger offers near- and longer-term ideas for allocators, including thoughts on areas where capital is scarce, alternatives may be attractive, and risks may bear watching.

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2025-01-31
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Navigating a volatile reality: three ideas for 2024 and beyond

2023 saw investors grapple with a new, more volatile reality. How should portfolios be positioned for opportunities and challenges in 2024? 

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2025-01-31
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Multi-Asset Market Outlook

To help think through the asset allocation outlook and implications for 2023, we offer views from iStrat, our investment strategy and solutions group

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2024-12-31
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Why income-seeking investors need to look across asset classes

Income plays an even more crucial role in portfolios than many of us realise, contributing a significant portion of returns for multi-asset portfolios. But with cash rates at around 5%, the world of income has changed. This should prompt investors to take a fresh look across asset classes to see where opportunities lie. 

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2024-12-31
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Learning to love (or live with) a late-cycle environment

Are we actually in a late-cycle environment and, if so, how should allocators respond? Head of Multi-Asset Strategy Adam Berger offers guidance, including on portfolio positioning, big cycle bets, and security selection.

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2024-12-31
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Rebalancing a multi-asset portfolio: A guide to the choices and trade-offs

Many investors wrestle with portfolio rebalancing decisions, particularly in volatile environments. In this paper, members of our Investment Strategy Team argue for a well-structured rebalancing policy and share research on different approaches and common implementation considerations.

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2025-12-31
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2024 Insurance Outlook: Position portfolios for the unexpected

Tim Antonelli offers two critical ideas for insurers' 2024 investment planning: doubling down on diversification and rethinking risk, including geopolitical and default risk.

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2024-12-31
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Beyond China: what does the rest of the EM equity world have to offer?

For investors contemplating a separate allocation to EM ex-China equities, members of our iStrat Team share their research on the composition of the opportunity set, the growing divergence in the behavior of EM ex-China equities and Chinese equities, and the long-term market outlook.

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2025-11-30
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Income investing in multi-asset portfolios: Tipping the balance in your favour

Income can play a crucial role in the pursuit of investment objectives over time, but research from our iStrat Team argues for a balanced approach to asset allocation decisions given the potential trade-offs between income and capital return, risk, and portfolio diversification.

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2024-09-30
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Role, risk, and residual alpha: A framework for manager research

With many asset owners revisiting their strategic asset allocation and considering changes in their investment line-up, Director of Manager Research Kat Price and Head of Multi-Asset Strategy Adam Berger offer their views on manager selection best practices.

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2024-08-31
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Mind the liquidity (and cost) gap: Revisiting a plan’s hedge-ratio approach

Members of our LDI Team take a fresh look at the process of setting and managing liability hedge ratio targets, including liquidity considerations that are top of mind today and the implementation toolkit.

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2025-06-30
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Is your asset allocation ready for the realities of climate change?

Our Investment Strategy Team shares key findings from the research behind their climate-aware strategic asset allocation (SAA) approach, including challenges and trade-offs that asset owners should understand.

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2025-06-30
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Time for a new playbook on bonds

Is it time to add to fixed income allocations? Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger and Fixed Income Strategist Amar Reganti offer their views, as well as thoughts on specific areas of opportunity.

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2024-05-31
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Is the structural case for inflation still intact?

Even if inflation cools in the coming months, members of our Investment Strategy team expect it to be "stickier" over the long term. Find out how that might impact asset allocation decisions.

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2024-05-31
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EM equities: Can they prove the doubters wrong?

Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger offers six reasons that EM equity performance could be much more compelling in the decade ahead, from attractive valuations to economic tailwinds to mean reversion in the US dollar.

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2024-05-31
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Closing the return gap: A new set of “stepping stone” ideas
Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger offers incremental, flexible investment ideas that can be combined to help asset owners pursue their goals amid declining capital market return expectations.
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2024-08-02
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The alpha equation: Balancing active risk sources in multi-asset portfolios

Members of our iStrat Team share their research on the process of deciding how much active risk to take at the asset class and security levels in pursuit of alpha objectives. They also offer a step-by-step framework for implementing the research findings.

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2024-04-30
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Designing a climate-aware strategic asset allocation

Members of our Investment Strategy Team explain how they incorporate climate metrics into their asset allocation optimization process. They also discuss implementation — the choice of specific climate-aware building blocks and strategies to express the desired asset allocation.

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2024-04-30
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Integrating climate change into capital market assumptions: our approach and findings
Members of our Investment Strategy team explain how they are incorporating climate-related inputs, including physical and transition risks, into their capital market assumptions and outline the impact of these changes at the asset-class level.
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2024-04-30
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Adapting our capital market assumptions to the realities of climate risk
As the momentum behind decarbonisation and net-zero objectives builds around the world, asset owners are increasingly engaged in addressing the investment implications of climate change. The focus thus far has largely been on implementation at the security- and manager-selection levels, but there is a growing recognition of the need to factor climate change into broader investment policy and asset allocation decisions. To help with this process, our Investment Strategy Team, in partnership with our Climate and ESG teams, recently completed a comprehensive effort to integrate climate risks into our capital market assumptions (CMAs).
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2024-04-30
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Using market-implied regimes to help build more resilient portfolios

Markets may fluctuate between different regimes, but how exactly should those regimes be defined? Our iStrat Team offers research on their market behavior-based approach and explains how it may aid in constructing portfolios that are better able to withstand the ups and downs of different environments.

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2024-03-31
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The churning tides of portfolio liquidity: How to avoid being left high and dry

Markets have sent asset owners some strong reminders of the need to think about liquidity risk across a portfolio and to plan for uncertainty. To help, Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger proposes a framework based on the intended uses and sources of liquidity.

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2024-02-29
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EM evolution: New paths in equity portfolio construction

Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger offers a framework for structuring EM equity portfolios, with a focus on "EM 3.0" — differentiated active strategies that have less reference to cap-weighted benchmarks and may be more diversifying in a portfolio.

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2024-01-31
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The denominator effect: Thoughts on the rise in private equity allocations

The sharp drop in public markets has left many asset owners with above-target exposure to private assets, raising a number of governance questions. Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger considers the likely responses and their potential pros and cons.

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2024-02-29
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Pivot points: Five portfolio positioning ideas for the new market regime

Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger looks at five ways in which the world may be very different in the coming decade and how they could influence the next wave of investment winners.

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2023-12-31
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Thematic investing: Long-term thinking for a short-term world

With economic conditions expected to remain volatile in the coming year, members of our Investment Strategy team suggest that thematic allocations may help reduce the importance of the cycle to portfolio returns.

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2023-12-31
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A practical guide to addressing Asian insurers’ interest-rate risk

Insurance Strategist Max Davies and ALM & Regulatory Capital Strategist Francisco Sebastian examine how diversification may help Asia's life insurers to better manage their exposure to interest-rate risk.

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2023-11-30
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The road less traveled: An insurer’s path to investing in alternatives
Insurance Multi-Asset Strategist Tim Antonelli lays out a sturdy yet flexible framework to help global insurers navigate the alternative investments space.
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2023-09-30
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Has China’s investment landscape permanently shifted?
Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger and Macro Strategist Santiago Millán consider key policy-related questions hanging over the Chinese market and share some near- and long-term investment views.
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2023-08-31
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Cash-balance liabilities: A new investment framework
A cash-balance plan is very different from a traditional pension, and the differences can have a major impact on interest-rate sensitivity. With this in mind, we propose a focus on capital preservation, consistent income, and liquidity.
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2023-08-31
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Is the commodities rally built to last?
Commodities were the only major asset class that performed well in the first half of 2022. Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger and Commodities Portfolio Manager David Chang consider whether there’s more upside from here.
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2023-08-31
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Will the Fed send the US economy into a recession?
Multi-Asset Strategist Adam Berger and US Macro Strategist Juhi Dhawan consider the broad impact of Fed rate hikes and how asset allocators should respond.
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2023-07-31
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Climate from the allocator's perspective
How do different asset allocators within Wellington incorporate climate change into their investment process as markets, data and regulation continue to evolve?
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2023-05-31
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Making the money last: Research insights on the decumulation challenge
Our Investment Strategy team considers the unique challenges of decumulation strategies, including sequencing and longevity risk, and offers thoughts on best practices in portfolio construction, process design, and implementation.
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2023-04-30
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Demystifying decumulation: A practical guide
Investors seeking a sound decumulation strategy must consider a host of variables, including risks that weren’t on the radar when they were accumulating assets. Members of our Investment Strategy team consider the interaction between portfolio withdrawals and specific characteristics of the portfolio’s realized return. They also offer thoughts on successful decumulation strategies, focusing on portfolio construction, process design, and implementation.
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2023-04-30
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Nobody’s perfect: The case for a long-term strategy in active management
While many asset owners recognize the value of a long-term mindset, it can be challenging to resist short-term instincts in volatile environments like the one we’ve seen in recent months. But asset owners who have a strategy to help them stay focused on the long term may avoid a number of potentially costly behaviors, including abandoning a thoughtfully selected allocation to a manager after a relatively short period of underperformance.
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2023-05-02
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