To gauge investor expectations after Joe Biden was declared winner of the U.S. election and good news broke about COVID vaccines, we surveyed 151 U.S.-based financial advisers. We examine the advisers’ views on the next 12 months and markets’ reaction since Election Day.

Good vaccine news on Nov. 9 drove unusual equity-index and factor returns, including in small caps. The MSCI USA Small Cap Index returned 3.03% that day vs. 0.82% for the MSCI USA Index. Was this due to the size factor, or was there a bigger story?

Positive vaccine news on Nov. 9 caused big moves in industry and style factors. Those hit hardest this year jumped, while previous high performers slumped. Did this mark new factors leadership and a long-awaited rotation from momentum to value?

Single-factor portfolios seek high exposure to a target factor and limited exposure to non-target ones. We assess the impact that common portfolio weighting schemes have on these exposures, as well as on portfolio efficiency, concentration and investability.

Factors have been shown to be important systematic sources of risk and return. We examine how factor analysis can help identify investment characteristics that lie beneath the surface of seemingly similar stocks and equity portfolios.

Global equities continued to rally in Q3, brushing aside fear of a second wave of COVID-19 and a large economic slump. We review what it meant from an equity and fixed-income factor perspective and look at what our models showed headed into Q4

How to define a factor? It’s a challenge for asset owners and wealth managers in evaluating how well factor products meet investment objectives. We found an improved and more robust measure can be formed by combining multiple descriptors. 

When COVID-19 first swept through global equity markets, many factors exhibited unprecedented performance swings. How could institutional investors interpret the industry-momentum factor’s moves in the context of the underlying market dynamics?