Spring is in the air for commodities, awaiting summer vibes

Equity outlook: Building on momentum

Credit outlook: Race to the bottom

Covariance rhapsody: A reality check for evaluating risk models

Europe: beautiful stagnation, challenging recovery?

SI Dilemma: A tale of two court cases

Real-life experience: Using ML and distance-to-default to predict distress risk

Japan: With all bases loaded, ready for a homerun?

Central bank watcher: One way or another

Customizing quant with Quintet

Tackling modern slavery leads Q4 Active Ownership report

Navigating the climate transition with forward-looking analytics

Carbon data measure a company’s emissions in the past. While this is valuable information, it does not accurately reflect the risks and opportunities related to the climate transition. For that, we need forward-looking metrics to analyze the transition readiness of companies.

Three reasons to move from cash to investment grade credit

As flows typically follow returns, we are now starting to see investors moving out of cash and into credits. This raises the question: Is this a smart move, or is cash still king in the current environment?

Podcast: In tune with the markets – Shame!

Tune in for the best of markets and the best in music with portfolio manager Arnout van Rijn. This week it's all about Davos, the freshly launched Bitcoin ETF, China's headwinds, earnings season in the US and the Great ESG Divide.

Value investing: "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"

As 2024 kicks off, we explore the resurgence of the Value factor since the Covid-19 vaccine announcement roughly three years ago, with insights from ten key graphs and analyses.

Podcast: Moving from cash to credits

Multi-asset opportunities in the climate transition era

Seeking opportunities in emerging markets' sustainable transition

Ocean life and hazardous chemicals lead 2024 engagement themes

A good enough end to a roller coaster COP

China needs fiscal firepower to spark equity revival

Credit outlook: Party like it’s the 1990s

Central bank watcher: Running down that hill

Equity outlook: Guarded optimism

We look back on a remarkably strong year for global equity markets, which despite a hesitant start delivered close to 20% returns by mid-December. Our Global Stars, Emerging Markets and Asian equity strategies have been performing successfully, all well above benchmark and high up in their peer group rankings.

Fixed income outlook: Staying Power

SI Dilemma: Is 'good enough' good enough in sustainability?

Finding diamonds in the rough

Marilyn Monroe once famously sang that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” – but do they hold the same allure as a metaphor for stocks? Looking for hidden gems among small caps rather than fixating on the crown jewels in mega caps may well allow investors to beat the market next year, says strategist Peter van der Welle.

‘You can’t blindly abandon a strategy’

Kent Daniel is professor at Columbia Business School. He was with Goldman Sachs’ Quantitative Investment Strategies group, and his research specializes in behavioral finance and asset pricing research. We spoke to him in the summer about factors, bias and his ongoing research.

Good COP or bad COP for climate summit in oil’s heartland?

It’s the first formal stocktake of how seriously the world is taking measures to combat climate change. So, will the upcoming COP28 summit in Dubai yield any concrete results?

2024 Outlook: Exit stage right for Goldilocks

Robeco’s new one-year outlook warns that the ‘Goldilocks’ scenario of a soft landing for the global economy faces increasing headwinds.

Honey, we shrunk the factor zoo

How many factors does it take to compress the factor zoo? Quant researchers Alexander Swade, Matthias Hanauer, Harald Lohre and David Blitz set out to find the answer.

Central bank watcher: Peaking and tweaking

The rise in long-term yields and the broader tightening of financial conditions has been noticed by central bankers. At both the recent ECB and Fed meeting this was mentioned as one of the factors behind their decision to keep rates on hold, in addition to signs of moderating inflation pressures.

AI, meet SI: Using artificial intelligence for sustainable investing

Artificial intelligence is being hailed as the greatest advancement of the 21st century – but can it help sustainability? Yes, says quant expert Mike Chen, who believes it may turn into a ‘moon landing moment’ for solving the world’s greatest problems.

Engaging for a Just Transition leads Q3 Active Ownership report

The issue of mitigating the social cost of transitioning from fossil fuels leads the Robeco Active Ownership team’s report of its activities in the third quarter.

Reversing the trend of short-term reversal

Has the short-term reversal effect truly vanished? In a new paper, Robeco's Quant Investing research team—Chief Researcher David Blitz, and Senior Researchers Bart van der Grient and Iman Honarvar—continue to explore the complex landscape of short-term reversal strategies. Serving as a sequel to the 2022 publication, "Beyond Fama-French Factors: Alpha from Short-Term Signals," this latest paper addresses growing concerns about the short-term reversal phenomenon.

‘The SDGs provide a valid, reliable way of working towards that impact question for investment portfolios’

Kees Koedijk is a Professor of Finance at Utrecht University and a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. He is one of three academics on Robeco’s Advisory Board for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, providing objective feedback on the scoring methodology of our SDG Framework, as well as its application to investment products.

Finding value within long-term thematic trends

It’s been man overboard for thematic investing as the style went out of favor in 2022. Steadying the ship means following the underlying trends that support key themes such as digital transformation and the green transition, says analyst Daniel Ernst.

The power of chips: The most strategic commodity in the world

Semiconductors are set for a resurgence in 2024 as their role in sustainable energy becomes ever-more important, says multi-asset investor Arnout van Rijn.

Using machine learning for emerging market equity returns

Machine learning algorithms and models have large potential for investing in emerging stock markets, says quant researcher Laurens Swinkels.

Vigilance required

Welcome to our renewed and expanded Fundamental Equity Quarterly. In addition to our regular outlook articles for developed markets and emerging markets, we present several new sections in this publication: where we differ from the market, Japan trip notes, sustainability highlights, a ‘stunning statistic’, and an interview with one of our lead portfolio managers.

SI Dilemma: Social or environmental – is the whole bigger than its parts?

At Robeco, we have always considered sustainability holistically. We started out integrating financially material sustainability issues in our investment processes. To also be able to analyze companies’ impact materiality, we developed a framework based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their underlying targets, thereby taking a holistic view on global sustainable development.

Credit outlook: This time is not different

Consensus views in the market have changed from a high likelihood of a recession to a most likely soft landing, at least in the US. Download the latest credit outlook to find out more.

Integrating the SDGS into Government Bond Portfolios

Extending the Robeco SDG Framework to cover government bonds can provide a useful way of bridging the funding gap for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, says quant researcher Laurens Swinkels.

Fixed income outlook: It's hard not to be bullish

Our fixed income quarterly outlook supports the belief that policy rate peaks are close or have arrived, and in either a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ landing scenario bonds can rally from current levels.

The invisible hand that guides bond markets

Understanding the neutral interest rate at which an economy neither contracts nor expands has vexed investors for years. But once grasped, the r* rate can provide many opportunities in bond markets, say Martin van Vliet, Bob Stoutjesdijk, Rikkert Scholten and Philip McNicholas.

5-year Expected Returns: Triple Power Play

Robeco is pleased to launch the 13th edition of its flagship annual publication, Expected Returns 2024-2028. The title this year is ‘Triple Power Play,’ in which our experts predict that three separate but overlapping forces are set to dominate markets over the next five years.

Mind the gap: Effectively replacing sustainability exclusions

Sustainable investors commonly exclude the least sustainable companies, but in doing so create a gap in the portfolio. Our latest research compares various methods to replace these excluded stocks.

Land of the rising yield

One of the world’s largest experiments in financial engineering may be about to come to an end, spelling a new era of higher yields in Japan.

The alpha and beta of emerging markets equities

Robeco’s approach to emerging markets investing was initially met with considerable skepticism, but the live performance of our model has exceeded our expectations. David Blitz, Robeco’s Chief Researcher, shares his thoughts on quant investing in emerging markets.

Lively AGM season highlighted in proxy voting report

Two-thirds of all shareholder meetings included votes against management in a lively proxy voting season for Robeco’s Active Ownership team.