A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation (Wiley Finance) - Hardcover

Kinlaw, William; Kritzman, Mark P.; Turkington, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1119397804 ISBN 13: 9781119397809

Publisher: Wiley, 2017

Synopsis

Since the formalization of asset allocation in 1952 with the publication of Portfolio Selection by Harry Markowitz, there have been great strides made to enhance the application of this groundbreaking theory. However, progress has been uneven. It has been punctuated with instances of misleading research, which has contributed to the stubborn persistence of certain fallacies about asset allocation.

A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation fills a void in the literature by offering a hands-on resource that describes the many important innovations that address key challenges to asset allocation and dispels common fallacies about asset allocation. The authors cover the fundamentals of asset allocation, including a discussion of the attributes that qualify a group of securities as an asset class and a detailed description of the conventional application of mean-variance analysis to asset allocation..

The authors review a number of common fallacies about asset allocation and dispel these misconceptions with logic or hard evidence. The fallacies debunked include such notions as: asset allocation determines more than 90% of investment performance; time diversifies risk; optimization is hypersensitive to estimation error; factors provide greater diversification than assets and are more effective at reducing noise; and that equally weighted portfolios perform more reliably out of sample than optimized portfolios.

A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation also explores the innovations that address key challenges to asset allocation and presents an alternative optimization procedure to address the idea that some investors have complex preferences and returns may not be elliptically distributed. Among the challenges highlighted, the authors explain how to overcome inefficiencies that result from constraints by expanding the optimization objective function to incorporate absolute and relative goals simultaneously. The text also explores the challenge of currency risk, describes how to use shadow assets and liabilities to unify liquidity with expected return and risk, and shows how to evaluate alternative asset mixes by assessing exposure to loss throughout the investment horizon based on regime-dependent risk.

This practical text contains an illustrative example of asset allocation which is used to demonstrate the impact of the innovations described throughout the book. In addition, the book includes supplemental material that summarizes the key takeaways and includes information on relevant statistical and theoretical concepts, as well as a comprehensive glossary of terms.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Praise for A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation

"Asset allocation is the most important yet challenging decision faced by every investor. By masterfully bridging theory and practice, Kinlaw, Kritzman, and Turkington have produced a modern guide to the topic that will be useful to practitioners and scholars alike."
—Robin Greenwood, George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking, Harvard Business School

"A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation is an exceptionally comprehensive treatise on the subject, as can be seen from just a sampling of the chapter headings—Fallacies (of which there are many), Time Diversification (not as easy as it may seem), Factors (points out some issues with this current hot trend), Illiquidity (what does it really cost), Risks (not just at-horizon, but also within- and beyond-horizon), and perhaps most important of all, Regime Shifts. This book has a lot to say, and a page-by-page read may be a bit much for the typical 'Practitioner,' but the authors provide a very readable chapter of Takeaways that should perhaps be the first point of entry. But even these more compact Takeaways are full of fresh insights into this truly important topic that is all too often given too short a shrift."
—Martin L. Leibowitz, PhD, Vice Chairman – Research, Morgan Stanley

"Will Kinlaw, Mark Kritzman, and Dave Turkington have a long history of discovering and very clearly describing surprising and useful investment results. This book continues that tradition by correcting several common myths about asset allocation and presenting the latest thinking about this fundamental issue. All investors who practice asset allocation for a living will benefit from reading this."
—Ronald N. Kahn, Global Head of Scientific Equity Research, BlackRock

"One of the best books ever written on applied research for asset allocation. This outstanding effort provides the missing link between academic research and practice. With remarkable clarity, the authors explain how to put risk at the center of portfolio construction. Speaking from experience advising some of the largest pools of assets in the world, they bring the practice and science of risk-based investing to a whole new level, and challenge conventional wisdom along the way. Everyone involved in asset allocation should read this book, including CIOs, quants, non-quants, academics, consultants, portfolio managers, advisors, individual investors, and plan sponsors. It will become a reference for the next wave of innovation in our industry. Bravo!"
—Sébastien Page, CFA, Head of Asset Allocation, T. Rowe Price, and coauthor of Factor Based Investing and Asset Allocation, CFA Institute Research Foundation

"Everything you ever wanted and need to know about asset allocation but were afraid to ask, written by three accomplished practitioners who put their money where their mouths are."
—Andrew W. Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management

About the Author

William Kinlaw, CFA, is a Senior Managing Di??rector and Global Head of State Street's academic affiliate, State Street Associates, a unique partnership that bridges the worlds of financial theory and practice.

Mark P. Kritzman, CFA, is a Founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Windham Capital Management, LLC and the Chairman of Windham's investment committee. He is responsible for managing research activities and investment advisory services. He is also a Founding Partner of State Street Associates, and teaches a graduate course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

David Turkington, CFA, is a Senior Managing Director and Head of Portfolio and Risk Research at State Street Associates.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1119397804
• ISBN 13: 9781119397809
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256