10 March 2009

A Long Road Ahead for Portfolio Construction: Practitioners’ Views of an EDHEC Survey

In order to obtain feedback from the industry on the findings of the EDHEC European Investment Practices Survey 2008, which showed that current practice in the industry fails to draw on widely-published and freely-available techniques in portfolio management techniques, EDHEC issued a “call for reaction” asking for explanations and ways to improve portfolio construction.

When asked for the reasons behind the insufficient application of portfolio construction research to practice and for ways out of the current situation, more than half of the responding industry professionals see the level of knowledge within their profession as the main barrier.

95% of the practitioners who responded share EDHEC's opinion that improvements need to be made to portfolio construction practices. Even though the recent events in financial markets are likely to increase investors' needs for portfolio construction that take into account extreme market scenarios for various asset classes, investment managers do not fully take into account extreme risks when constructing portfolios. They also fail to employ techniques that avoid generating overly-concentrated portfolios because of poor input estimation.

86% of the professionals responding to the questionnaire report that further education and effort on the part of investment managers are highly important in closing the gap between real-word practice and academic research.

The EDHEC European Investment Practices Survey was produced with the support of Newedge, a brokerage affiliate of Calyon and Société Générale.

A copy of A Long Road Ahead for Portfolio Construction: Practitioners' Views of an EDHEC Survey can be downloaded
here

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