Over the last few decades, increasing global economic and financial integration promoted economic development and enabled investors to seek opportunities and spread risks across national borders. This report, which was commission by the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, examines diversification nopportunities including the importance of emerging markets; how a handful of large technology companies accounted for a significant percentage of recent developed-market performance and omitting geographical or size segments would have had a substantial impact on returns; and the role of starting valuations and dividend growth explaining long-term equity market performance.

During low interest-rate, high-volatility environments, some investors have turned to high dividend-paying stocks. However, overly simplistic approaches to selecting dividend-paying securities exposed investors to potential “yield traps.” Could these traps have been avoided?

Value stocks generally underperformed the broad U.S. equity market over the past decade — just as they did in the late 1990s. What drove that underperformance? Was it consistent globally? Within U.S. sectors?

Technological advances have expanded the application of factors. What was the realm of quantitative investors has become more accessible, bringing greater transparency and potential insight into portfolio characteristics and performance drivers.

Despite global equity performance, U.S. DC plan participants may be ill prepared to meet retirement-spending needs. We assessed four equity-allocation scenarios, all following a common glidepath and bond allocation, to see which performed best.

The momentum-value spread saw one of the largest corrections in history over the summer. What does our model show going forward?

MBS prepayment risk is a complex topic. But is it too complex for an AI-based model using neural networks?

Accurately estimating factor exposures for stocks and portfolios can be economically relevant and may improve the investment process for a variety of investors.