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Dimitris Melas
Managing Director and Global Head of Core Equity Research
About the Contributor
Dimitris Melas is Managing Director and Global Head of Core Equity Research at MSCI, where he is responsible for equity research and strategic product development across both equity indexes and equity analytics. Dimitris leads a global team of research specialists located in several cities around the world. Prior to joining MSCI in 2006, Dimitris worked at HSBC Asset Management as Head of Research and Head of Quantitative Strategies. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering, an MBA in Finance, and a Ph.D. in Applied Probability from the London School of Economics. He has published several research papers in peer reviewed journals and serves as Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Portfolio Management.
Blog posts by Dimitris Melas
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Discretionary managers use fundamental analysis to select stocks and construct portfolios that seek to beat the market. These managers face substantial headwinds in the current environment. From a business perspective, they are under pressure to reduce cost and improve performance. The market environment has also been challenging, as high correlations between stocks and the dominance of a handful of large technology companies have made it harder to generate alpha from stock selection.
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Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla, suggested in a series of tweets that going private could help Tesla avoid the scrutiny of quarterly reporting and pressure from short selling. Do companies targeted by short sellers share common characteristics? Could factor analysis help investors identify stocks that may become short-selling targets?
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Our research shows how favorable ESG characteristics have historically had a positive impact on equity valuation, risk and performance. But many active managers may have concerns that using ESG data could disrupt their investment process and introduce unintended biases to the portfolio.
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Institutions and individuals increasingly invest through funds that track indexes. While index funds bring transparency and low cost, their critics claim that they allocate capital indiscriminately, hurting market efficiency. Is this claim supported by the evidence? It is not. Our analysis shows that, far from damaging market efficiency, index funds1 facilitate active portfolio management by offering investors diverse and efficient tools to express investment views and implement active investment decisions.
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Apr. 03, 2018
Putting the spotlight on Spotify: Why have stocks with unequal voting rights outperformed? »
Nearly 15 years after Google’s initial public offering, the debate about listed companies that offer unequal voting rights to outside investors rages on. A number of high-profile technology companies including Dropbox Inc., Spotify and Snap Inc. have recently listed shares with unequal voting rights, adding fuel to the debate. Meanwhile, investors are trying to determine if they should shun the stock issued by these companies or include them in equity portfolios.
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Large U.S. technology companies, the so-called FAANG, dominated the U.S. stock market in the last few years and had a significant impact on many investment strategies. These companies have been underrepresented in most factor-based strategies due to their unattractive factor characteristics. Have factor investors suffered from not investing in these stocks?
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Growing fears about rising inflation and interest rates sparked a decline across equity markets in the last few days.
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Markets have enjoyed a relatively long period of positive returns and low volatility, making some investors wonder if a correction is imminent. One possible trigger for a correction would be investors concluding that market valuations have become extreme, which could lower future returns.
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Over the past decade, many long-term institutional investors have incorporated Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations into their portfolios, by creating segregated ESG mandates or by incorporating ESG criteria across the entire portfolio.
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Hedge funds and other investors who manage portfolios that rebalance frequently face a challenge when it comes to the use of factors for trading, hedging and risk monitoring: Which factors tend to break down over time?