Should Investors Fear $100 Oil?
Although crude oil prices above $100 a barrel will pinch consumer pockets, investor anxiety on this topic is both premature and exaggerated.
October 2018
Infrastructure Debt: Understanding the Opportunity
With underlying assets that provide essential services, infrastructure debt can play a key role in institutional investor portfolios. The asset class offers the possibility of delivering attractive returns, matching long-term liabilities, and diversifying traditional business cycle-sensitive investment holdings. Within infrastructure debt, private debt has been of particular institutional interest, as it offers increased return potential in […]
September 2018
Should You Avoid Commitment (Facilities)?
In short, no—their use isn’t going away any time soon. Rather than avoid them, incorporate new elements to more clearly assess the manager’s true investment skill.
June 2018
Policy Benchmarking: Best Practices for Private Investments
For investors with private allocations, how one incorporates them into the policy benchmark will materially impact the portfolio’s relative performance, making the choice key to informed decision making. We review the various methodologies used and make a series of recommendations on best practices to follow. In considering the performance of private investments within the total portfolio, we anchor to a set of principles: keep it simple, don’t treat private investments differently, and make performance evaluation as meaningful as possible.
May 2018
Portfolio Benchmarking: Best Practices for Private Investments
When assessing performance at the aggregate private portfolio and sub-component level, investors should take the long view. In this publication, we review how long funds take to settle into their ultimate quartile ranking and highlight our framework for benchmarking a portfolio of private investments.
May 2018
Thoughts on the “Retail Apocalypse”
Retail is changing and some companies face challenges, but this theme has probably been overhyped, and implications for investors are limited. The retailing industry is experiencing significant change and traditional business models have been disrupted. The growth of e-commerce has dovetailed with ongoing store closures by some high profile retailers, leading to press reports about […]
April 2018
Is it Time to Sell Energy MLPs?
We don’t think so. Investors with allocations to energy MLPs (master limited partnerships) may want to maintain existing allocations, despite their recent poor performance and the proposed regulatory changes impacting interstate pipelines.
March 2018
Harvesting the Potential of Private Investments
In the November 2017 issue of Benefits Magazine, which covers benefit issues affecting multiemployer, single employer and public plan representatives, senior investment director and investment actuary in Cambridge Associates’ pension practice, Alex Pekker, contributed an article highlighting the potential for private investments in a pension’s investment portfolio. Pekker explains that private investments could be a […]
November 2017