Investment expertise

Market technique

Before implementing active interest rate and credit strategies, a set of technical factors is considered. These focus on short-term market dynamics and on improving the timing of decision-making:

• Technical analysis
• Sentiment and risk appetite
• Supply and demand dynamics
• Market liquidity
• Transaction costs

Taking market technique into account is not to generate ideas per se, but rather is understood as a final review before implementing active investment strategies based on fundamentals versus valuation.

Portfolio implementation

We are convinced that not only proprietary research, but also portfolio implementation should be linked to portfolio management. This offers clear advantages:

• Clear responsibilities and true performance orientation
• Investment decisions that are close to the market and feasible
• Prevention of mechanistic “nonsense” implementation
• Efficient, direct and fast implementation after the investment decision has been made

Risk management

Risk management takes place at various levels. On the one hand, risk management is an integral part of the investment process of the management team. On the other hand, risk management is carried out independently of portfolio management.

The portfolio management team tracks portfolio risks ex ante and ex post using advanced portfolio management systems and models. In addition, our approach to risk management is pragmatic, not dogmatic. Accordingly, we consider stress tests and scenarios as well as common sense and experience to be essential. More concretely, our risk management includes the following aspects:

• Ex ante :

  • Tactical: Stop-loss selling
  • Cyclical: Stress tests and scenario analysis
  • Structural: Valuation, sales in case of inadequate risk compensation
  • Continuous qualitative review based on common sense and experience
• Ex post :

  • Tracking Error
  • Performance contribution and attribution
  • VaR

Thanks to our systems, we are able to monitor and control all important aspects of risk, such as interest rate risk, credit risk and currency risk in real time, both in absolute terms and against a benchmark.

Due to the high granularity of the data available to us, we have a very good overview of the different sources of risk, which enables us to improve our risk management.

Furthermore, our independent risk management department ensures that investment guidelines are adhered to and regularly conducts comprehensive performance and risk reviews and analyses.