Articles by Chun Wang, CFA, PRM Director of Multi-Asset Strategies

We examine the relative importance of country effect vs. sector effect within four regions: Europe, Eastern Europe/Middle East/Africa, Asia Pacific ex-Japan ex-China, and Americas ex-U.S.

Focus of global investing has shifted from sector and is now centered on the regional effect.

This month Chung Wang examines historical performance of companies that increase or initiate dividends, as well as companies that are buying back stock. These stocks tend to significantly outperform.

Within Select Industries Portfolio, Diversified Financial Services equity group has been de-activated, and is being replaced by a screen-based quantitative theme called Deep Value. This is essentially a GARP type screen.

Analysts are playing an increasingly important role in today’s market. In this section, we focus on the market’s interpretation of three characteristics related to analysts estimates: Popularity, Agreement, and Trust.

A look at earnings and revenue risk to see how the market reveals its preference.

A look at how the market reveals its preference for the top-line growth (revenue growth) vs. the bottom-line growth (EPS growth).

There are four key decisions a company’s management has to make: Dividend Policy, External Financing, Capital Expenditure (Capex), and Research & Development (R&D).  We studied how the market rewards each of these management decisions.

Return On Equity (ROE) has been performing well as a quality factor on a global basis over the last six to twelve months.

As one of the oldest investment philosophies, value investing has certainly stood the test of time. The recent market meltdown is no exception.

Most quantitative portfolio managers employ some variation of the momentum strategy, and most have had a hard time with this particular strategy since the end of 2007.

When clients ask about our country views, we suggest they take a look at our global group work because our Global Group Scores are capable of capturing country alpha!