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Final Report
Stanford Endowment Fund
Analysis
Portfolio Management
Riesling Fonds : Sulaiman Butiban, Saisai Guo, Kuangda Xu, Kun Yang,
Guiyun Zhang, Wanxin Zhang, Pei Zheng
12/4/2015
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
1
Fund Introduction
Stanford Endowment
Stanford Endowment is designed to optimize long-term returns, create consistent annual
payouts to the University’s operating budget and preserve purchasing power for future
generations of Stanford faculty and students. The endowment fund is now managed by The
Stanford Management Company (SMC) which is a division of the university with oversight by
the university board of trustees.
As of Aug. 31, 2015 (the end of Stanford’s fiscal year), the value of the endowment was $22.2
billion, an increase of 3.6% over the previous year. (The change in endowment value results
from investment gains and losses, endowment gifts and other funds transferred into the
endowment, offset by the annual payout for university operations). The university's endowment
payout for fiscal year 2015 was $1.06 billion, equal to 4.9 percent of the beginning-of-year
endowment value.
According to the 2014 endowment investment annual report, the strategic asset allocation is
like following. There are 6 asset classes, including the public equity, private equity, absolute
return, natural resources, real estate, and fixed income. The report shows a really excellent
overall return of 16.8%, largely beating the benchmarks, which include the inflation rate, the
Stanford composite benchmark, the 60% Equity/40% Bond composite. In addition, most of the
individual asset class outperformed the benchmark respectively.
Our Fund
Our Riesling Fund is committing to allocate capital into high quality investment universe to
provide stable excess return by implementing professional active investment strategy, including
abroad asset allocating to seek potential economic growth around the world. This philosophy
matches the quality of education and brand name of Stanford. We are pursuing an active
management, higher return along with controlled risks. We have a global diversified strategy
for Stanford endowment fund.
Asset allocation sort by asset class Target
Public Equity 25%
Private Equity 23%
Absolute Return 22%
Natural Resources 12%
Real Estate 8%
Fixed Income 10%
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
2
Economic Outlook
United States’ Economy
Monetary policy change: The Fed is most likely going to hike interest rate in 2 weeks. The latest
news is that the Fed is signaling the hiking rate in this month meeting. Janet Yellen is confident
for the US economy grows at a moderate path. She was "looking forward" to a U.S. interest
rate hike that will be seen as a testament to the economy's recovery from recession.
For now, the core inflation is approaching to the target range, and the nonfarm payroll has been
picking up. In the labor market, although the natural full employment rate has not been realized,
the unemployment rate reached its lowest record since 2008. Also, housing market is gradually
recovering. The average of house price is increasing. Meanwhile, the consumer spending is
growing, which bring a huge positive impact to US economy, because consumption takes up to
almost 70% in US GDP.
Taking advantage of the QE program and extremely low interest rate, the US financial market
is booming. US stock market has been a bullish for a long time since 2009, and the bond yield
keeps decreasing. With the hiking coming to the table, the financial market would adjust and
react. However, we expect the market would recover because the solid and healthy fundamental
economy have been proved by the raising interest rate. However, in the long run, the economy
is full of uncertainties, including the vague of wage increasing, the clasped of crude oil and the
weak global economy prospect. Still, in the forecastable future, we are confident at US equity
market and we predicted the S&P500 will still increase.
As for the bond market, it would provide stronger cash flow payment and lower credit risks to
investor because of the bright outlook of economy, although the interest raising would put the
bond price down. Interest rate gain would take larger proportion in the bond investment. We
expect the 10y-2y treasury yield spread would narrow due to the short-term interest rate is going
to raise, while the long term economy perspective growth is still uncertain, pressing the
increases of the long run yield.
(Please refer to the next 2 pages that presents illustrations from the Bloomberg terminal. See
Charts from 1-6)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
3
(Chart 1: US GDP)
(Chart 2: US Core CPI)
(Chart 3: US Unemployment rate)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
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(Chart 4: US Housing sales)
(Chart 5: S&P 500)
(Chart 6: US 10Y2Y Spread)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
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Eurozone & Germany’s Economy
For now, the ECB decided that the interest rate stay in closely 0.25%. At the same time, since
March 2015 the ECB has executed the bond-buying program. Such policies are expected to run
through to September 2016. The intend of easing-money policy is to eject liquidity into the
financial system, decrease the long-term interest rate, stimulate the industrial investment and
consumer spending, and finally, lift up the inflation rate and boost the economic growth. The
latest news in Dec.3rd 2015 is that ECB decided to extend the asset-purchase program to March.
2017, and could be extended further if the annual inflation rate doesn’t rise quickly enough.
Inflation increase in Eurozone keeps stable but not enough to reach the policy target. Export
growth is on the recovery but still sluggish due to the global demand decreases. Euro currency
is still on the track of weakening.
Germany is the fourth largest economy entity in the world and the largest within Euro Area.
In 2015, GDP growth stays stable. Analysts estimates the recovery of Germany economy is on
the moderate and stable pace, approaching to 2% GDP growth rate in the next three years.
Furthermore, the PMI, the critical leading economic activity indicator, is around 54 over past
three years, far more away the 50 threshold. It signals that manufacturing industry is
continuously expanding. Overall, German economy has been stable despite all the challenges
the global economy has faced.
Germany is the second largest exporter in the world and exports account for more than one-
third of national output. But the data signals that a weak global demand environment. Due to
the sluggish growth in China, one of the most important importer for Germany, in larger extent
that the exports will be determined by the prospect and recovery of Chinese market. At the Euro
zone, the other member countries are still in fragility expansion, dragging the Germany’s
exports. Also, the exports of Germany are influenced by the US economy grow lingeringly. So,
the expectation for the exports is that the exports would still assume the downside risk due to
the external weak environment.
Indeed, Germany economy is the best in the Eurozone. Such sustainable economy development
is shown in the financial market. DAX performed best compared to other stock markets. With
the QE expansion and more stimulus policy coming out, the Germany financial market would
stay up trend. Also, based on the healthier and resistant economic structure, the Germany stock
market is more likely surpass other markets in Eurozone.
The newest booming point is the concept of Industry 4.0. This is the German vision for the
future of manufacturing, one where smart factories use information and communications
technologies to digitize their processes and reap huge benefits in the form of improved quality,
lower costs, and increased efficiency. The German government is investing €200m to spur the
Industry 4.0 research across government, academia, and business. In the future, the advanced
technology and manufacturing sector would become the fresh new engine of the Germany
economy.
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
6
Other aspects, Germany auto-industry is suffering the Volkswagen emission scandal and
refugee crowding. Meanwhile, the numbers of the aging people is still increasing. Such issues
are supposed to be closely watched.
(Please refer to the charts for illustration purposes from the Bloomberg terminal. See Charts
from 7-12)
(Chart 7: EUR/USD)
(Chart 8: Germany GDP)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
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(Chart 9: Germany PMI)
(Chart 10: Germany DAX)
(Chart 12: Germany Export)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
8
China’s Economy
Economic growth slow down to a moderate pace. Analyst expect China would fall to 6% to 6.5%
during next 3 years.
Since China is one of the largest producers, so we believe it is important to look at
PMI(purchasing managers' index) index which is a powerful indicator of manufacturing sector,
an index score over 50 indicates future expansion, and vice versa.
PMI is still less than 50 at current level, which indicates future contraction of the manufacturing
sector. A future contraction of manufacturing sector in China would have an adverse effect on
the global economy recovery. Also, other high-frequency indicators like the trade, electricity
output, steel usage, auto sales continue to step down, because not only the demotic weak
economic activity but also the negative impacts from outside sluggish global demand.
Based on the continued downside risk in economy, the monetary policy would keep loose to
support and stimulate the economy. We expect the PBOC would continue easing the credit by
cutting the interest rate and reserve requirement ratio.
However, China’s economy is experiencing transition and a structure reform. Adecreasing PMI
could also indicate old manufacturing industry is gradually stepping out while a new and more
advanced economy is developing. The government call for and support a change from
Investment-driven to consumption-oriented. Therefore, the consumption related industry would
be the spotlight in the following years.
As the latest data shows, the retail sales growth, especially the online sales. Real retail sales
growth picked up to 10.9% y/y in September (Aug: +10.8%), with YTD online sales up a strong
36.2% y/y. Also, the expectation in retail sales keep promising in the next 2 years.
At the same time, the government is executing a stricter regulatory to the financial market since
the stock market crashed in June. A series of reform policy have been released. Promoting the
capital market to serve for fundamental economy has become the priority. We still look forward
a favorable financial environment and high-efficiency financial system happened in the future.
Meanwhile, the government is finding a new engine and making its effort to largely support the
all of the entrepreneurial business, especially the internet technology and E-commerce entity,
which attract more and more capital and talented people coming in.
Finally, the Chinese yuan has been included in IMF a basket of currency reserve and designated
into SDR, which boost foreign investor confidence to hold Chinese yuan assets. Also, such
success would push China to deepen the economy reform.
(Please refer to the next page that presents illustrations from the Bloomberg terminal. See Charts
from 13-14)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
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(Chart 13: China GDP)
(Chart 14: China Retail sales)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
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Japan’s Economy
The Bank of Japan would keep ejecting the liquidity into the market due to the latest negative
GDP quarterly data, which means an economy recession. Analyst expects the extremely low
price growth could not be figured out in the short term. Stimulation policy would continue
bumping up the financial asset price.
However, one of the most influential factor of stagnant economy is the aging people issue,
which would probably press the long term economy growth.
(Please refer to the charts below that presents an illustrations from the Bloomberg terminal.
Charts from 15&16)
(Chart 15: Japan GDP)
(Chart 16: Japan CPI)
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
11
Strategy & Asset Allocation
Given the perpetual nature of the University, the current Stanford endowment investment
horizon is long-term. Their objective is to generate maximum total returns for an appropriate
level of risk. The strategic asset allocation is listed below:
According to their predictions on inflation and other economic factor, they expect the real
endowment return to be 8.2% in the upcoming three years.
We took both portfolio volatility and spending volatility into consideration and we found that
there is a growing trend of operating expense in Stanford’s current investment. Thus, the risk
tolerance would be slightly higher within the next 3 years of investment horizon in order to
meet the spending projection of the university. In terms of fund return, the endowment fund
serves the purpose as a permanent asset base to fund for specific activities, hence our
investment must at least preserve the real purchasing power after inflation adjustment.
The liquidity requirement for an endowment fund is generally low since emergency needs are
unusual thus we would consider alternative investment for our asset allocation.
Our investment philosophy is that we want to gain a broad exposure of different type of assets
with respect to different markets all over the world, in order to generate sustainable cash
flows in the next three years, we are trying to maximize the dividend and coupon yields of our
portfolio more than capital gain yield. Specifically speaking, our strategy will focus more on
passive investing and only slightly on active. We will be investing be investing in ETF and
some options of commodities which we think are on the verge of rapid growth. The ETFs
these across sectors in China, Japan, Germany as well as domestic US. Our recommended
asset allocation is listed below for more details look at the Apendix:
Asset allocation sort by asset class Target
Public Equity 25%
Private Equity 23%
Absolute Return 22%
Natural Resources 12%
Real Estate 8%
Fixed Income 10%
Asset allocation sort by asset class Target
Public Equity 43.6%
Real estate 25.7%
Absolute Return 11.5%
Commodities 11.6%
Fixed Income 7.6%
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
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We expect our portfolio would generate a 12% return annually, and the composited benchmark,
which is defined as the target-weighted combination of S&P 500, DAX, NIKKE 225 and SH
composite index, would increase about 8% annually. We hope our investment would beat the
benchmark by 4%. The tracking error would be around 10%-12%. In the next section of the
report we propose our investing strategy by specifically looking at each country.
Real Estate
26%
Equity
44%
Fixed Income
8%
Absolute Return
11%
Commodity
11%
ASSET ALLOCATION
Germany
29%
US
42%
Japan
23%
China
6%
ALLOCATION BY COUNTRY
Asset allocation sort by country Target
US 42.3%
Germany 28.5%
Japan 23.1%
China 6.1%
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
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Investment strategy breakdown
U.S.
Again our goal is to provide sustainable cash flows to the endowment by focusing more on
passive investing with our equity. However active with our asset allocation and industry
choice. In the US we invested in ETFs in the healthcare, technology for equity. For exposure
to real estate we invested REITS. In addition, we also invested in Fixed Income ETF’s. We
expect the greenback to appreciate in the next couple of years with the current forward
guidance by the US central bank. Therefore, we invested ETF that are US dollar denominated
to get as much exposure to the dollar. We intended to eliminate the currency risks as much as
possible when investing in foreign ETFs by putting our money in currency hedged ETPs.
The US equity market have recovered dramatically since the financial crises and we believe
going forward we might experience a stock market correction with the Fed upcoming actions,
however throughout our investment horizon we believe that the US stock market will perform
very well.
We picked a few real estate ETF primarily for the purpose of diversification, yet we do
believe the sector would experience future growth given low mortgage rate, and homeowners
would be likely to finance themselves to buy houses before the Fed raises interest rates. US
housing market is booming especially in big cities like San Francisco and San Jose. Wealthy
investors from Europe, Asia and the Middle East are investing their money in US real estate
and we believe that will effect growth in the upcoming future.
We are actively pursuing the higher return, but we also consider to allocate little part of
capital to the US bond market in search for a constant and stable cash flow, supporting for the
routine expenses for Stanford activities. Thus, those ETFs characterizing secured and high
coupon payments are included in our investment basket. At the same time, the duration is set
to a range 3-5 years, which largely decrease the interest rate risks due to the expectation of
hiking rate. Meanwhile, higher US bond yield can attract foreign investors from countries
which are experiencing extremely low bond yield, especially in Eurozone and Japan. So,
increasing US bond demand would support the bond price.
Germany
Some investors believe that Germany’s stock market to be the most attractive compared to all
global financial markets. Currently, the Euro zone encounters sluggish economic growth and
The DAX as we mentioned earlier have increased by 23% despite that fact. The latest move
the ECB is perusing is strengthening the asset-buying program and as the chairman added last
meeting is that they are going to keep on aggressively stimulating the economy as long as it
needed. In addition, it’s expected that the ECB will extend the program to the March. 2017.
We observed the success of QE in the US having effect in the US economy and stock market
and we truly believe the ECB actions are signaling a huge future booming in stock market.
Therefore we invested in ETF/equity.
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
14
For our investment in Germany, we invested in ETFs which mimics the indexes performances
of broad German equity market including both large and small-cap companies with a focus on
technology and manufacturing. Germany is benefiting the strong export and internal economy.
Furthermore, the "Industry 4.0" high-tech strategy will yield positive return in the technology
sector in the long term. We believe the driver of this growth looking forward especially in the
tech and auto industry will be mostly influenced by the weaker euro and high demand for
cheaper exports.
We also invested in ETFs and REITs to get exposure to the real estate market in Germany
because believe investing in it now is promising. According to many researches and analysts
Germany is a mounting star in the real estate market currently competing with countries like
the UK. Wealthy investors for the past couple of years are buying real estate in cities like
Berlin and Munich due to the excellent economic performance and activity in Germany.
Below we show a time line graph of the house price index that indicates the general housing
prices in Germany from 2013 all the way to the first quarter of 2015:
The base year of the chart shown previously is 2010 where the index was 100. As seen above
there is high growth in the Germany real estate market and going forward we believe that
growth is going to stay throughout our investment horizon.
China
For our investment in China, we would like to gain exposure in two major sectors which are
Technology and Financial. China is now experiencing normal growth period, when the
economic engine is turning to the consumer-driven from investment-oriented. However, at the
same time the structure reform is being undertaken which specifically targets on the financial
industry. Regulation will be more strict meanwhile promoting financial innovation of
structured products as well as P2P lending, thus the general investment environment is more
favorable than before.
104.00
106.00
108.00
110.00
112.00
114.00
116.00
118.00
2013Q1 2013Q2 2013Q3 2013Q4 2014Q1 2014Q2 2014Q3 2014Q4 2015Q1
House Price Index
Germany
source:eurostat.ec.europa.eu
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
15
Moreover, the government is urgently encouraging the E-commerce, leading enterprises such
as Alibaba has already gained its market exposure all over the world, hence Technology and
Internet sector is increasingly gaining encouraging policy support from government. In short,
we believe that tech sector has tremendous growth potential given the booming e-commerce
business activities together with government policy support.
Financial service sector has been experiencing great drop given the situation of tumbling
stock market started in late June earlier this year, thus we believe it is a good time to buy since
most of the financial assets are currently undervalued.
Japan
The investment in Japan is more diversified as we are trying to gain exposure of most sectors
through ETFs, yet we have a special focus on financial sector as well as healthcare. Japan has
just announced that their economy is entering a recession, thus it is expected to continually
stepping up the stimulus program, ramping up the equity market.
Hence we selected the ETF which is exposed to the overall Japanese equity market with
currency hedging. Japanese yen would be expected to depreciate more when liquidity is
injecting into the market. Large financial institution will be the first to benefit in terms of central
bank cash injection, and potential asset buyback programs. Healthcare is never an out-dated
topic in Japan given its aging population, the demand of healthcare service is relatively less
volatile and would in term provide stable cash flow to our investment.
Commodities Investments
We wanted to add a new asset class into our portfolio that Stanford did not have direct exposure
to in its portfolio. We wanted to invest in commodities, and it's far from gold and oil like the
usual. We want invest in Tea leaves and Coconut fruits. We will invest in an index ETF that
gives us exposure on Tea in the US. For Coconuts we might have to sign forward contracts to
invest in the commodity. We believe that these 2 commodities markets are on the verge of
impressive growth especially in the world's biggest economy the U.S. For the tea industry we
made some research and the article that best describes our motivation of investing in this
commodity is Market Realest.com commenting on growth in tea consumption:
Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, next to water. Though the per capita
consumption of tea in the US is quite low compared to countries like the UK and China, the growth
in tea consumption in recent years has been impressive. According to the Tea Association of the USA,
the total wholesale value of tea sold in the US grew from less than $2 billion in 1990 to over $10
billion in 2014. The preference for healthier beverages is driving consumers away from soda and
boosting the demand for tea and other categories like bottled water.
We currently are invested in the SPY ETF which has 9.4% of consumer staples that gives
explicit exposure to the beverage because it includes beverages companies that sells it. Tea is
definitely a hot market and we want to take such advantage. Coconuts have the same growth
“
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
16
characteristics and its industry is growing in the same attitude for exactly the same reasons.
Another commodity that we believe is catching to this healthy trend is cocoa and we invested
in an ETF by Barclay goes by the ticker CHOC. People are eating more dark chocolate then
ever instead of the commercial milk chocolate. Last year there was a global cocoa fruit shortage
and we believe that will happen again because of the healthier choices people are making going
forward.
Portfolio performance & Risk statistics
Based on historical data from Dec 2013-2015
Return
Period
Port
(YTD)
Bench
(YTD)
Port (1
Year)
Bench (1
Year)
Total Return 12.38 7.94 13.17 11.32
Maximum Return 2.23 2.37 2.23 2.37
Minimum Return -3.48 -4.40 -3.48 -4.40
Mean Return (Annualized) 20.61 14.28 19.94 18.08
Mean Excess Return
(Annualized) 5.54 1.57
Risk
Period
Port
(YTD)
Bench
(YTD)
Port (1
Year)
Bench (1
Year)
Standard Deviation
(Annualized) 11.42 15.48 11.18 15.21
Downside Risk (Annualized) 8.50 11.80 8.30 11.60
Tracking Error (Annualized) 10.37 10.34
Risk/Return
Period
Port
(YTD)
Bench
(YTD)
Port (1
Year)
Bench (1
Year)
Sharpe Ratio 1.25 0.65 1.24 0.83
Information Ratio 0.38 0.11
Treynor Measure 0.26 0.26
Beta (ex-post) 0.55 0.54
Correlation 0.74 0.73
Capture Ratio 0.64 0.63
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
17
We backtested our portofolio to analyse its historical performance compared to the bench mark.
The statistics above that we numerated illustrates a time period that begins on Dec 2, 2013 to
Dec 2, 2015.
Looking at the first section that illustrates the portfolio’s total returns we see the YTD return
of 12.4% and the benchmark is 7.9 %. And an annual return of about 13% compared to our
benchmark of about 11%. We believe that return is mostly influenced by the stronger dollar
because as we mentioned earlier in the report most of our investments are dollar denominated
or hedged against the other currencies. Statisticians love it when we talk in their language but
thank to them they always have proved that the best measure that illustrates an expected value
of a number is its historical mean. So our simple expected return for this portfolio loosely
speaking is the average mean or total returns for both YTD and 1 year is about 20%. We also
expect that the excess return of the bench mark would be from 2% - 5 % looking forward.
Next we look at the risk stats of the portfolio for our portfolio as we mentioned earlier is to
optimize for low risk and compared to the benchmark we have a lower standard deviation.
About 11% compared to 15% that’s for both YTD and looking back for 1 year. Our Downside
Risk is annualized is 8% compared to the benchmark of 11%. We believe that the high quality
of assets that we allocated and country choice helped us reduce market exposure and exposure
to many other risk factors. Also most of our assets are ETFs which tend to be way less volatile
than other securities. Tracking error is a standard deviation measure which is represented in %
measuring how close our portfolio tracked our benchmark. Our portfolio tracking error is fairly
high around 10%. In the future we intend to lower that number going forward to better manage
our fund.
Looking at the Sharpe Ratio our portfolio beats the benchmark both for YTD and looking back
1 year. For how much risk we are taking to every unit of return we have a ratio of 1.25 compared
to the benchmark at .65 for YTD. And we have a Sharpe Ratio of 1.24 compared to the
benchmark of .83 looking back for 1 year. As we have mentioned earlier we our market
exposure is low and we will discuss the risk aspect in more details in the next section however
quantifying that risk to measure our general market exposure we had a Beta(ex-post) of .55
backward looking. We are not very confident with our correlation structure and we are currently
working more on diversification. Our correlation number is high do to most of our ETFs that
are dominated in dollars that hugely effected our correlation measure. Also most of our assets
are US based and many other international assets that we invested in are hugely effected by the
US stock market. We quantitavly broke our portfolio stats and taked about return verses risk in
the next section we breakdown the risk aspects of our portfolio with a heavy qualitative attitude.
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
18
Risk Analysis
Market risks
We are still concerned the instability and persistence of the US economy recovery, and the
hiking rate would hurt the vulnerable economic growth based on the external uncertainties.
Also, the monetary policy divergent between US and Eurozone would cause the more of the
capital flow into U.S, which would probably pump up the financial asset bubble and result in
systematic financial risk.
Meanwhile, the emerging market and some developed countries are struggling of the domestic
structure reform and deflation, which would press the global economy growth. With the market
full of liquidity, financial asset would be overvalued and, is possible to crash again,
contaminating the turmoil of the entire financial market.
Currency risks
Due to the portfolio composition, currency risks are built in. The most important consideration
is that we are facing the Euro depreciation risk, because we hold Germany asset denominated
in Euro Also, there is a concern of US dollar inflation, which would decrease the purchasing
power in the future.
ETF liquidity risks
We are trading the ETF products mostly in the US exchange. As an investment tool, we worry
the liquidity of the ETF when there is a panic happened or even in the normal trading session.
Geopolitical risks
Russia and Turkey are on the edge of fighting in the Mid-East area, which would compound
the geopolitical issue and cause the society turbulence. Also, the terrorist attack issue is still
closely watched. Such potential catalysts would damage the global economy development
concern.
Other risks
 Volkswagen emission scandal
The car manufacturing is one major stake industry in German, Volkswagen issue is
supposed be one factor in our consideration of investing in German market.
 Refugee issue
The crowding refugee flow into Germany would raise a concern of social problem.
 Greece debt risk
The debt crisis is not settled down completely. We concerns that the sluggish growth in
other Eurozone countries with heavy debt would repeat in the forecastable future.
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
19
The Risk Management Strategies
I. Due diligence: We are supposed to do prudent analysis during the all portfolio management
process. We would closely watch the risk factors including the economic environment change,
trade and investment climate, and financial considerations and so on. We are desire to keep
sensitivity to the market change.
II. Diversification & Dynamic rebalancing: Getting more asset diversification and shift the asset
allocation based on the macroeconomic condition change. Keep the dynamic adjustment of the
portfolio. Our target rebalance period would be set 6 month window. For example, if Japan is
continuing slumping during the next 6 month, we would liquidate the Japanese asset position
and go back to invest in US, especially the high-tech companies. We are supposed to increase
the US asset. Same thing as other countries investment.
III. Decrease the market risk exposure by using hedging tools, like future contract, forward
contract and option derivatives. However, such risk management tools themselves incorporate
the coherent risks, like the basis risks, credit risks and so on.
Scenario Analysis
I. When overall economy expand due to the stimulation, we would enlarge exposure to the
Germany, Japan and China to take advantage of high-growth. Also, we might increase the
commodities investment, like the oil and coal, whose price would warm up with the global
demand recovery.
Asset allocation sort by country Target
US 35%
Germany 35%
Japan 15%
China 15%
Asset allocation sort by asset class Target
Public Equity 45%
Real estate 20%
Absolute Return 10%
Commodities 20%
Fixed Income 5%
Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management
20
II. When economy contracted, we will decrease the risk exposures in order to protect our
position. We will focus on the safer area like the US and Germany, while almost get rid of
investment in Japan and China because of the uncertainties. Moreover, we mainly increase the
US short-term and mid-term bonds and alternative investment like the gold. We are supposed
to lower down the real estate part.
Group Members’ Contributions:
1. Fund Introduction: Saisai Guo
2. Economic Outlook: Guiyun Zhang
3. Strategy and Allocation & Portfolio Stats: Sulaiman Butiban, Kuangda Xu, Kun Yang
4. Risk Analysis: Pei Zheng, Wanxin Zhang
Asset allocation sort by country Target
US 75%
Germany 21%
Japan 2%
China 2%
Asset allocation sort by asset class Target
Public Equity 25%
Real estate 5%
Absolute Return 10%
Commodities 0%
Fixed Income 50%
Alternatives 10%

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Stanford Endowment Fund - Asset Allocation

  • 1. Final Report Stanford Endowment Fund Analysis Portfolio Management Riesling Fonds : Sulaiman Butiban, Saisai Guo, Kuangda Xu, Kun Yang, Guiyun Zhang, Wanxin Zhang, Pei Zheng 12/4/2015
  • 2. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 1 Fund Introduction Stanford Endowment Stanford Endowment is designed to optimize long-term returns, create consistent annual payouts to the University’s operating budget and preserve purchasing power for future generations of Stanford faculty and students. The endowment fund is now managed by The Stanford Management Company (SMC) which is a division of the university with oversight by the university board of trustees. As of Aug. 31, 2015 (the end of Stanford’s fiscal year), the value of the endowment was $22.2 billion, an increase of 3.6% over the previous year. (The change in endowment value results from investment gains and losses, endowment gifts and other funds transferred into the endowment, offset by the annual payout for university operations). The university's endowment payout for fiscal year 2015 was $1.06 billion, equal to 4.9 percent of the beginning-of-year endowment value. According to the 2014 endowment investment annual report, the strategic asset allocation is like following. There are 6 asset classes, including the public equity, private equity, absolute return, natural resources, real estate, and fixed income. The report shows a really excellent overall return of 16.8%, largely beating the benchmarks, which include the inflation rate, the Stanford composite benchmark, the 60% Equity/40% Bond composite. In addition, most of the individual asset class outperformed the benchmark respectively. Our Fund Our Riesling Fund is committing to allocate capital into high quality investment universe to provide stable excess return by implementing professional active investment strategy, including abroad asset allocating to seek potential economic growth around the world. This philosophy matches the quality of education and brand name of Stanford. We are pursuing an active management, higher return along with controlled risks. We have a global diversified strategy for Stanford endowment fund. Asset allocation sort by asset class Target Public Equity 25% Private Equity 23% Absolute Return 22% Natural Resources 12% Real Estate 8% Fixed Income 10%
  • 3. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 2 Economic Outlook United States’ Economy Monetary policy change: The Fed is most likely going to hike interest rate in 2 weeks. The latest news is that the Fed is signaling the hiking rate in this month meeting. Janet Yellen is confident for the US economy grows at a moderate path. She was "looking forward" to a U.S. interest rate hike that will be seen as a testament to the economy's recovery from recession. For now, the core inflation is approaching to the target range, and the nonfarm payroll has been picking up. In the labor market, although the natural full employment rate has not been realized, the unemployment rate reached its lowest record since 2008. Also, housing market is gradually recovering. The average of house price is increasing. Meanwhile, the consumer spending is growing, which bring a huge positive impact to US economy, because consumption takes up to almost 70% in US GDP. Taking advantage of the QE program and extremely low interest rate, the US financial market is booming. US stock market has been a bullish for a long time since 2009, and the bond yield keeps decreasing. With the hiking coming to the table, the financial market would adjust and react. However, we expect the market would recover because the solid and healthy fundamental economy have been proved by the raising interest rate. However, in the long run, the economy is full of uncertainties, including the vague of wage increasing, the clasped of crude oil and the weak global economy prospect. Still, in the forecastable future, we are confident at US equity market and we predicted the S&P500 will still increase. As for the bond market, it would provide stronger cash flow payment and lower credit risks to investor because of the bright outlook of economy, although the interest raising would put the bond price down. Interest rate gain would take larger proportion in the bond investment. We expect the 10y-2y treasury yield spread would narrow due to the short-term interest rate is going to raise, while the long term economy perspective growth is still uncertain, pressing the increases of the long run yield. (Please refer to the next 2 pages that presents illustrations from the Bloomberg terminal. See Charts from 1-6)
  • 4. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 3 (Chart 1: US GDP) (Chart 2: US Core CPI) (Chart 3: US Unemployment rate)
  • 5. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 4 (Chart 4: US Housing sales) (Chart 5: S&P 500) (Chart 6: US 10Y2Y Spread)
  • 6. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 5 Eurozone & Germany’s Economy For now, the ECB decided that the interest rate stay in closely 0.25%. At the same time, since March 2015 the ECB has executed the bond-buying program. Such policies are expected to run through to September 2016. The intend of easing-money policy is to eject liquidity into the financial system, decrease the long-term interest rate, stimulate the industrial investment and consumer spending, and finally, lift up the inflation rate and boost the economic growth. The latest news in Dec.3rd 2015 is that ECB decided to extend the asset-purchase program to March. 2017, and could be extended further if the annual inflation rate doesn’t rise quickly enough. Inflation increase in Eurozone keeps stable but not enough to reach the policy target. Export growth is on the recovery but still sluggish due to the global demand decreases. Euro currency is still on the track of weakening. Germany is the fourth largest economy entity in the world and the largest within Euro Area. In 2015, GDP growth stays stable. Analysts estimates the recovery of Germany economy is on the moderate and stable pace, approaching to 2% GDP growth rate in the next three years. Furthermore, the PMI, the critical leading economic activity indicator, is around 54 over past three years, far more away the 50 threshold. It signals that manufacturing industry is continuously expanding. Overall, German economy has been stable despite all the challenges the global economy has faced. Germany is the second largest exporter in the world and exports account for more than one- third of national output. But the data signals that a weak global demand environment. Due to the sluggish growth in China, one of the most important importer for Germany, in larger extent that the exports will be determined by the prospect and recovery of Chinese market. At the Euro zone, the other member countries are still in fragility expansion, dragging the Germany’s exports. Also, the exports of Germany are influenced by the US economy grow lingeringly. So, the expectation for the exports is that the exports would still assume the downside risk due to the external weak environment. Indeed, Germany economy is the best in the Eurozone. Such sustainable economy development is shown in the financial market. DAX performed best compared to other stock markets. With the QE expansion and more stimulus policy coming out, the Germany financial market would stay up trend. Also, based on the healthier and resistant economic structure, the Germany stock market is more likely surpass other markets in Eurozone. The newest booming point is the concept of Industry 4.0. This is the German vision for the future of manufacturing, one where smart factories use information and communications technologies to digitize their processes and reap huge benefits in the form of improved quality, lower costs, and increased efficiency. The German government is investing €200m to spur the Industry 4.0 research across government, academia, and business. In the future, the advanced technology and manufacturing sector would become the fresh new engine of the Germany economy.
  • 7. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 6 Other aspects, Germany auto-industry is suffering the Volkswagen emission scandal and refugee crowding. Meanwhile, the numbers of the aging people is still increasing. Such issues are supposed to be closely watched. (Please refer to the charts for illustration purposes from the Bloomberg terminal. See Charts from 7-12) (Chart 7: EUR/USD) (Chart 8: Germany GDP)
  • 8. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 7 (Chart 9: Germany PMI) (Chart 10: Germany DAX) (Chart 12: Germany Export)
  • 9. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 8 China’s Economy Economic growth slow down to a moderate pace. Analyst expect China would fall to 6% to 6.5% during next 3 years. Since China is one of the largest producers, so we believe it is important to look at PMI(purchasing managers' index) index which is a powerful indicator of manufacturing sector, an index score over 50 indicates future expansion, and vice versa. PMI is still less than 50 at current level, which indicates future contraction of the manufacturing sector. A future contraction of manufacturing sector in China would have an adverse effect on the global economy recovery. Also, other high-frequency indicators like the trade, electricity output, steel usage, auto sales continue to step down, because not only the demotic weak economic activity but also the negative impacts from outside sluggish global demand. Based on the continued downside risk in economy, the monetary policy would keep loose to support and stimulate the economy. We expect the PBOC would continue easing the credit by cutting the interest rate and reserve requirement ratio. However, China’s economy is experiencing transition and a structure reform. Adecreasing PMI could also indicate old manufacturing industry is gradually stepping out while a new and more advanced economy is developing. The government call for and support a change from Investment-driven to consumption-oriented. Therefore, the consumption related industry would be the spotlight in the following years. As the latest data shows, the retail sales growth, especially the online sales. Real retail sales growth picked up to 10.9% y/y in September (Aug: +10.8%), with YTD online sales up a strong 36.2% y/y. Also, the expectation in retail sales keep promising in the next 2 years. At the same time, the government is executing a stricter regulatory to the financial market since the stock market crashed in June. A series of reform policy have been released. Promoting the capital market to serve for fundamental economy has become the priority. We still look forward a favorable financial environment and high-efficiency financial system happened in the future. Meanwhile, the government is finding a new engine and making its effort to largely support the all of the entrepreneurial business, especially the internet technology and E-commerce entity, which attract more and more capital and talented people coming in. Finally, the Chinese yuan has been included in IMF a basket of currency reserve and designated into SDR, which boost foreign investor confidence to hold Chinese yuan assets. Also, such success would push China to deepen the economy reform. (Please refer to the next page that presents illustrations from the Bloomberg terminal. See Charts from 13-14)
  • 10. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 9 (Chart 13: China GDP) (Chart 14: China Retail sales)
  • 11. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 10 Japan’s Economy The Bank of Japan would keep ejecting the liquidity into the market due to the latest negative GDP quarterly data, which means an economy recession. Analyst expects the extremely low price growth could not be figured out in the short term. Stimulation policy would continue bumping up the financial asset price. However, one of the most influential factor of stagnant economy is the aging people issue, which would probably press the long term economy growth. (Please refer to the charts below that presents an illustrations from the Bloomberg terminal. Charts from 15&16) (Chart 15: Japan GDP) (Chart 16: Japan CPI)
  • 12. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 11 Strategy & Asset Allocation Given the perpetual nature of the University, the current Stanford endowment investment horizon is long-term. Their objective is to generate maximum total returns for an appropriate level of risk. The strategic asset allocation is listed below: According to their predictions on inflation and other economic factor, they expect the real endowment return to be 8.2% in the upcoming three years. We took both portfolio volatility and spending volatility into consideration and we found that there is a growing trend of operating expense in Stanford’s current investment. Thus, the risk tolerance would be slightly higher within the next 3 years of investment horizon in order to meet the spending projection of the university. In terms of fund return, the endowment fund serves the purpose as a permanent asset base to fund for specific activities, hence our investment must at least preserve the real purchasing power after inflation adjustment. The liquidity requirement for an endowment fund is generally low since emergency needs are unusual thus we would consider alternative investment for our asset allocation. Our investment philosophy is that we want to gain a broad exposure of different type of assets with respect to different markets all over the world, in order to generate sustainable cash flows in the next three years, we are trying to maximize the dividend and coupon yields of our portfolio more than capital gain yield. Specifically speaking, our strategy will focus more on passive investing and only slightly on active. We will be investing be investing in ETF and some options of commodities which we think are on the verge of rapid growth. The ETFs these across sectors in China, Japan, Germany as well as domestic US. Our recommended asset allocation is listed below for more details look at the Apendix: Asset allocation sort by asset class Target Public Equity 25% Private Equity 23% Absolute Return 22% Natural Resources 12% Real Estate 8% Fixed Income 10% Asset allocation sort by asset class Target Public Equity 43.6% Real estate 25.7% Absolute Return 11.5% Commodities 11.6% Fixed Income 7.6%
  • 13. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 12 We expect our portfolio would generate a 12% return annually, and the composited benchmark, which is defined as the target-weighted combination of S&P 500, DAX, NIKKE 225 and SH composite index, would increase about 8% annually. We hope our investment would beat the benchmark by 4%. The tracking error would be around 10%-12%. In the next section of the report we propose our investing strategy by specifically looking at each country. Real Estate 26% Equity 44% Fixed Income 8% Absolute Return 11% Commodity 11% ASSET ALLOCATION Germany 29% US 42% Japan 23% China 6% ALLOCATION BY COUNTRY Asset allocation sort by country Target US 42.3% Germany 28.5% Japan 23.1% China 6.1%
  • 14. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 13 Investment strategy breakdown U.S. Again our goal is to provide sustainable cash flows to the endowment by focusing more on passive investing with our equity. However active with our asset allocation and industry choice. In the US we invested in ETFs in the healthcare, technology for equity. For exposure to real estate we invested REITS. In addition, we also invested in Fixed Income ETF’s. We expect the greenback to appreciate in the next couple of years with the current forward guidance by the US central bank. Therefore, we invested ETF that are US dollar denominated to get as much exposure to the dollar. We intended to eliminate the currency risks as much as possible when investing in foreign ETFs by putting our money in currency hedged ETPs. The US equity market have recovered dramatically since the financial crises and we believe going forward we might experience a stock market correction with the Fed upcoming actions, however throughout our investment horizon we believe that the US stock market will perform very well. We picked a few real estate ETF primarily for the purpose of diversification, yet we do believe the sector would experience future growth given low mortgage rate, and homeowners would be likely to finance themselves to buy houses before the Fed raises interest rates. US housing market is booming especially in big cities like San Francisco and San Jose. Wealthy investors from Europe, Asia and the Middle East are investing their money in US real estate and we believe that will effect growth in the upcoming future. We are actively pursuing the higher return, but we also consider to allocate little part of capital to the US bond market in search for a constant and stable cash flow, supporting for the routine expenses for Stanford activities. Thus, those ETFs characterizing secured and high coupon payments are included in our investment basket. At the same time, the duration is set to a range 3-5 years, which largely decrease the interest rate risks due to the expectation of hiking rate. Meanwhile, higher US bond yield can attract foreign investors from countries which are experiencing extremely low bond yield, especially in Eurozone and Japan. So, increasing US bond demand would support the bond price. Germany Some investors believe that Germany’s stock market to be the most attractive compared to all global financial markets. Currently, the Euro zone encounters sluggish economic growth and The DAX as we mentioned earlier have increased by 23% despite that fact. The latest move the ECB is perusing is strengthening the asset-buying program and as the chairman added last meeting is that they are going to keep on aggressively stimulating the economy as long as it needed. In addition, it’s expected that the ECB will extend the program to the March. 2017. We observed the success of QE in the US having effect in the US economy and stock market and we truly believe the ECB actions are signaling a huge future booming in stock market. Therefore we invested in ETF/equity.
  • 15. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 14 For our investment in Germany, we invested in ETFs which mimics the indexes performances of broad German equity market including both large and small-cap companies with a focus on technology and manufacturing. Germany is benefiting the strong export and internal economy. Furthermore, the "Industry 4.0" high-tech strategy will yield positive return in the technology sector in the long term. We believe the driver of this growth looking forward especially in the tech and auto industry will be mostly influenced by the weaker euro and high demand for cheaper exports. We also invested in ETFs and REITs to get exposure to the real estate market in Germany because believe investing in it now is promising. According to many researches and analysts Germany is a mounting star in the real estate market currently competing with countries like the UK. Wealthy investors for the past couple of years are buying real estate in cities like Berlin and Munich due to the excellent economic performance and activity in Germany. Below we show a time line graph of the house price index that indicates the general housing prices in Germany from 2013 all the way to the first quarter of 2015: The base year of the chart shown previously is 2010 where the index was 100. As seen above there is high growth in the Germany real estate market and going forward we believe that growth is going to stay throughout our investment horizon. China For our investment in China, we would like to gain exposure in two major sectors which are Technology and Financial. China is now experiencing normal growth period, when the economic engine is turning to the consumer-driven from investment-oriented. However, at the same time the structure reform is being undertaken which specifically targets on the financial industry. Regulation will be more strict meanwhile promoting financial innovation of structured products as well as P2P lending, thus the general investment environment is more favorable than before. 104.00 106.00 108.00 110.00 112.00 114.00 116.00 118.00 2013Q1 2013Q2 2013Q3 2013Q4 2014Q1 2014Q2 2014Q3 2014Q4 2015Q1 House Price Index Germany source:eurostat.ec.europa.eu
  • 16. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 15 Moreover, the government is urgently encouraging the E-commerce, leading enterprises such as Alibaba has already gained its market exposure all over the world, hence Technology and Internet sector is increasingly gaining encouraging policy support from government. In short, we believe that tech sector has tremendous growth potential given the booming e-commerce business activities together with government policy support. Financial service sector has been experiencing great drop given the situation of tumbling stock market started in late June earlier this year, thus we believe it is a good time to buy since most of the financial assets are currently undervalued. Japan The investment in Japan is more diversified as we are trying to gain exposure of most sectors through ETFs, yet we have a special focus on financial sector as well as healthcare. Japan has just announced that their economy is entering a recession, thus it is expected to continually stepping up the stimulus program, ramping up the equity market. Hence we selected the ETF which is exposed to the overall Japanese equity market with currency hedging. Japanese yen would be expected to depreciate more when liquidity is injecting into the market. Large financial institution will be the first to benefit in terms of central bank cash injection, and potential asset buyback programs. Healthcare is never an out-dated topic in Japan given its aging population, the demand of healthcare service is relatively less volatile and would in term provide stable cash flow to our investment. Commodities Investments We wanted to add a new asset class into our portfolio that Stanford did not have direct exposure to in its portfolio. We wanted to invest in commodities, and it's far from gold and oil like the usual. We want invest in Tea leaves and Coconut fruits. We will invest in an index ETF that gives us exposure on Tea in the US. For Coconuts we might have to sign forward contracts to invest in the commodity. We believe that these 2 commodities markets are on the verge of impressive growth especially in the world's biggest economy the U.S. For the tea industry we made some research and the article that best describes our motivation of investing in this commodity is Market Realest.com commenting on growth in tea consumption: Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, next to water. Though the per capita consumption of tea in the US is quite low compared to countries like the UK and China, the growth in tea consumption in recent years has been impressive. According to the Tea Association of the USA, the total wholesale value of tea sold in the US grew from less than $2 billion in 1990 to over $10 billion in 2014. The preference for healthier beverages is driving consumers away from soda and boosting the demand for tea and other categories like bottled water. We currently are invested in the SPY ETF which has 9.4% of consumer staples that gives explicit exposure to the beverage because it includes beverages companies that sells it. Tea is definitely a hot market and we want to take such advantage. Coconuts have the same growth “
  • 17. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 16 characteristics and its industry is growing in the same attitude for exactly the same reasons. Another commodity that we believe is catching to this healthy trend is cocoa and we invested in an ETF by Barclay goes by the ticker CHOC. People are eating more dark chocolate then ever instead of the commercial milk chocolate. Last year there was a global cocoa fruit shortage and we believe that will happen again because of the healthier choices people are making going forward. Portfolio performance & Risk statistics Based on historical data from Dec 2013-2015 Return Period Port (YTD) Bench (YTD) Port (1 Year) Bench (1 Year) Total Return 12.38 7.94 13.17 11.32 Maximum Return 2.23 2.37 2.23 2.37 Minimum Return -3.48 -4.40 -3.48 -4.40 Mean Return (Annualized) 20.61 14.28 19.94 18.08 Mean Excess Return (Annualized) 5.54 1.57 Risk Period Port (YTD) Bench (YTD) Port (1 Year) Bench (1 Year) Standard Deviation (Annualized) 11.42 15.48 11.18 15.21 Downside Risk (Annualized) 8.50 11.80 8.30 11.60 Tracking Error (Annualized) 10.37 10.34 Risk/Return Period Port (YTD) Bench (YTD) Port (1 Year) Bench (1 Year) Sharpe Ratio 1.25 0.65 1.24 0.83 Information Ratio 0.38 0.11 Treynor Measure 0.26 0.26 Beta (ex-post) 0.55 0.54 Correlation 0.74 0.73 Capture Ratio 0.64 0.63
  • 18. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 17 We backtested our portofolio to analyse its historical performance compared to the bench mark. The statistics above that we numerated illustrates a time period that begins on Dec 2, 2013 to Dec 2, 2015. Looking at the first section that illustrates the portfolio’s total returns we see the YTD return of 12.4% and the benchmark is 7.9 %. And an annual return of about 13% compared to our benchmark of about 11%. We believe that return is mostly influenced by the stronger dollar because as we mentioned earlier in the report most of our investments are dollar denominated or hedged against the other currencies. Statisticians love it when we talk in their language but thank to them they always have proved that the best measure that illustrates an expected value of a number is its historical mean. So our simple expected return for this portfolio loosely speaking is the average mean or total returns for both YTD and 1 year is about 20%. We also expect that the excess return of the bench mark would be from 2% - 5 % looking forward. Next we look at the risk stats of the portfolio for our portfolio as we mentioned earlier is to optimize for low risk and compared to the benchmark we have a lower standard deviation. About 11% compared to 15% that’s for both YTD and looking back for 1 year. Our Downside Risk is annualized is 8% compared to the benchmark of 11%. We believe that the high quality of assets that we allocated and country choice helped us reduce market exposure and exposure to many other risk factors. Also most of our assets are ETFs which tend to be way less volatile than other securities. Tracking error is a standard deviation measure which is represented in % measuring how close our portfolio tracked our benchmark. Our portfolio tracking error is fairly high around 10%. In the future we intend to lower that number going forward to better manage our fund. Looking at the Sharpe Ratio our portfolio beats the benchmark both for YTD and looking back 1 year. For how much risk we are taking to every unit of return we have a ratio of 1.25 compared to the benchmark at .65 for YTD. And we have a Sharpe Ratio of 1.24 compared to the benchmark of .83 looking back for 1 year. As we have mentioned earlier we our market exposure is low and we will discuss the risk aspect in more details in the next section however quantifying that risk to measure our general market exposure we had a Beta(ex-post) of .55 backward looking. We are not very confident with our correlation structure and we are currently working more on diversification. Our correlation number is high do to most of our ETFs that are dominated in dollars that hugely effected our correlation measure. Also most of our assets are US based and many other international assets that we invested in are hugely effected by the US stock market. We quantitavly broke our portfolio stats and taked about return verses risk in the next section we breakdown the risk aspects of our portfolio with a heavy qualitative attitude.
  • 19. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 18 Risk Analysis Market risks We are still concerned the instability and persistence of the US economy recovery, and the hiking rate would hurt the vulnerable economic growth based on the external uncertainties. Also, the monetary policy divergent between US and Eurozone would cause the more of the capital flow into U.S, which would probably pump up the financial asset bubble and result in systematic financial risk. Meanwhile, the emerging market and some developed countries are struggling of the domestic structure reform and deflation, which would press the global economy growth. With the market full of liquidity, financial asset would be overvalued and, is possible to crash again, contaminating the turmoil of the entire financial market. Currency risks Due to the portfolio composition, currency risks are built in. The most important consideration is that we are facing the Euro depreciation risk, because we hold Germany asset denominated in Euro Also, there is a concern of US dollar inflation, which would decrease the purchasing power in the future. ETF liquidity risks We are trading the ETF products mostly in the US exchange. As an investment tool, we worry the liquidity of the ETF when there is a panic happened or even in the normal trading session. Geopolitical risks Russia and Turkey are on the edge of fighting in the Mid-East area, which would compound the geopolitical issue and cause the society turbulence. Also, the terrorist attack issue is still closely watched. Such potential catalysts would damage the global economy development concern. Other risks  Volkswagen emission scandal The car manufacturing is one major stake industry in German, Volkswagen issue is supposed be one factor in our consideration of investing in German market.  Refugee issue The crowding refugee flow into Germany would raise a concern of social problem.  Greece debt risk The debt crisis is not settled down completely. We concerns that the sluggish growth in other Eurozone countries with heavy debt would repeat in the forecastable future.
  • 20. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 19 The Risk Management Strategies I. Due diligence: We are supposed to do prudent analysis during the all portfolio management process. We would closely watch the risk factors including the economic environment change, trade and investment climate, and financial considerations and so on. We are desire to keep sensitivity to the market change. II. Diversification & Dynamic rebalancing: Getting more asset diversification and shift the asset allocation based on the macroeconomic condition change. Keep the dynamic adjustment of the portfolio. Our target rebalance period would be set 6 month window. For example, if Japan is continuing slumping during the next 6 month, we would liquidate the Japanese asset position and go back to invest in US, especially the high-tech companies. We are supposed to increase the US asset. Same thing as other countries investment. III. Decrease the market risk exposure by using hedging tools, like future contract, forward contract and option derivatives. However, such risk management tools themselves incorporate the coherent risks, like the basis risks, credit risks and so on. Scenario Analysis I. When overall economy expand due to the stimulation, we would enlarge exposure to the Germany, Japan and China to take advantage of high-growth. Also, we might increase the commodities investment, like the oil and coal, whose price would warm up with the global demand recovery. Asset allocation sort by country Target US 35% Germany 35% Japan 15% China 15% Asset allocation sort by asset class Target Public Equity 45% Real estate 20% Absolute Return 10% Commodities 20% Fixed Income 5%
  • 21. Riesling Fonds Portfolio Management 20 II. When economy contracted, we will decrease the risk exposures in order to protect our position. We will focus on the safer area like the US and Germany, while almost get rid of investment in Japan and China because of the uncertainties. Moreover, we mainly increase the US short-term and mid-term bonds and alternative investment like the gold. We are supposed to lower down the real estate part. Group Members’ Contributions: 1. Fund Introduction: Saisai Guo 2. Economic Outlook: Guiyun Zhang 3. Strategy and Allocation & Portfolio Stats: Sulaiman Butiban, Kuangda Xu, Kun Yang 4. Risk Analysis: Pei Zheng, Wanxin Zhang Asset allocation sort by country Target US 75% Germany 21% Japan 2% China 2% Asset allocation sort by asset class Target Public Equity 25% Real estate 5% Absolute Return 10% Commodities 0% Fixed Income 50% Alternatives 10%