Incorporating Alternative Risk Premia into Balanced Portfolios: Is there any added value?

Abstract

Evaluating Alternative Risk Premia products as standalone investments is not sufficient to conclude whether these products add value to institutional investors, whose portfolios are largely composed of well-diversified equity and bond allocations, and usually smaller ones to alternative assets. We study whether the inclusion of ARP products adds value to two well-known benchmarks of balanced allocations: the 60/40 world equity/bond portfolio and the Pictet LPP 2015-60 index. Taking a sample of live ARP products from 2016 to May 2021, we find that a systematic allocation to ARP with no equity exposure improves risk-adjusted performance, due to risk reduction, even though it causes a small drag in long-term return. This impact is similar to the one many investors seek in Trend-Following funds or Tail-Hedge products, for which we compare results. The drag in performance disappears if one can dynamically manage the inclusion of ARP into the balanced portfolios, even though market timing ability is at the very least a rare asset.