STRATEGIC RISK MANAGEMENT Having just experienced a global pandemic that sent equity markets into a tailspin in March 2020, risk management is a more relevant topic than ever. It remains, however, an often poorly understood afterthought. Many portfolios are designed without any thought given to risk management before they are handed off to a dedicated but separate risk management team.In Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk, Campbell R. Harvey, Sandy Rattray, and Otto Van Hemert deliver a reimagining of the risk management process. The book envisions a marriage between the investment and risk processes, an approach that has proven successful at the world s largest publicly listed hedge fund, Man Group.The authors provide readers with a new framework for portfolio design that includes defensive strategies, drawdown risk controls, volatility targeting, and actively timing rebalancing trades. You will learn about how the book s new approach to risk management fared during the recent market drawdown at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. You will also discover why the traditional risk weighting approach only works on certain classes of assets.The book shows you how to accurately evaluate the costs of defensive strategies and which ones offer the best and most cost-effective protection against market downturns. Finally, you will learn how to obtain a more balanced return stream by targeting volatility rather than a constant notional exposure and gain a deeper understanding of concepts like portfolio rebalancing.Perfect for people working in the asset management industry and financial policy makers, Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk will also earn a place in the libraries of economics and finance scholars, as well as casual readers who take an active approach to investing in their savings or pension assets.PRAISE FOR STRATEGIC RISK MANAGEMENT Strategic Risk Management shows how to fully embed risk management into the portfolio management process as an equal partner to alpha. This should clearly be best practice for all asset managers. Jase Auby, Chief Investment Officer, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas This book shows the power of integrating risk and investment management, rather than applying risk management as an afterthought to satisfy set limits. I was pleased to shepherd some of the key ideas in this book through the publication process at The Journal of Portfolio Management. Frank J. Fabozzi, Editor, The Journal of Portfolio Management Financial markets today are quite different from those of the last century. Understanding leverage, correlations, tails, and other risk parameters of a portfolio is at least as important as work on signals and alpha. In that sense, bringing risk management from control to front office should be a priority for asset managers. This book explains how to do it. Marko Kolanovic, Chief Global Market Strategist, J.P. MorganA powerful new approach to risk management in volatile and uncertain marketsWhile the COVID-19 pandemic threw the importance of effective risk management into sharp relief, many investment firms hang on to a traditional and outdated model of risk management. Using siloed and independent portfolio management and risk monitoring teams, these firms miss out on the opportunities presented by integrated risk management.Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk delivers a fresh approach to risk management in difficult market conditions. The accomplished author team advocates for the amalgamation of portfolio design and risk monitoring teams, incorporating risk management into every aspect of portfolio design.The book provides a roadmap for the crucial aspects of portfolio design, including defensive strategies, drawdown risk controls, volatility targeting, and actively timing rebalancing trades. You will discover how these techniques helped the authors achieve remarkable results during the market drawdown in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they can help you protect your assets against unpredictable but inevitable future bear markets.Ideal for professionals in the asset management industry, Strategic Risk Management: Designing Portfolios and Managing Risk is a valuable resource for financial policy makers, economics and finance scholars, and anyone with even a passing interest in taking an active role in investing for their future.

A fresh approach to managing risk in the most challenging market conditionsStrategic Risk Management presents an innovative approach to portfolio design. Often the risk management function is a series of tripwires that are activated after the portfolio is already in trouble. Strategic Risk Management presents a framework that seeks to integrate the initial portfolio design and the risk management function. Much of the book's research was conducted pre-COVID-19; the market selloff in March 2020 offers a unique out of sample experiment that provides evidence supportive of the approach.A crucial ingredient in this integrative design is to understand the performance of various investment strategies in stressful market conditions. The book begins by measuring the performance of various assets and strategies that purport to provide hedging abilities: such as put options and long gold positions. While put options are an extremely reliable, few would want to give up 700 basis points a year to buy this type of insurance. And even if gold does not have the type of drag that long options strategies do, gold turns out to be an unreliable hedge.We focus on two investments that historically offer impressive protection in adverse events: trend following strategies and quality-based equity strategies. We show that performance of trend following strategies is naturally linked to the payoff of a long call and long put position. This property is particularly useful in mitigating portfolio drawdowns.The book also considers operational strategies such as portfolio rebalancing. Most investors routinely rebalance their portfolios, for example, to a 60/40 equity/bond mix. However, few investors realize that a mechanical rebalancing strategy increases drawdowns and portfolio risk. The reason is simple. In extended equity sell offs, the rebalancing strategy is to buy, which increases drawdowns. Strategic Risk Management offers an intuitive solution. If the trend following signal suggests that the drawdown will continue, delay the rebalancing. We call this strategic rebalancing.The book contains various other insights, including analyzing the impact of a portfolio strategy that targets a certain risk level. This technique reduces allocations to the riskiest assets when volatility spikes. Given that surges in volatility are usually associated with plunging markets, this strategy also reduces drawdowns.The reader of this book will:* Learn how to incorporate risk management into the core portfolio design, rather than treating it as an afterthought;* Gain a deeper understanding of concepts such as portfolio rebalancing;* Acquire tools to achieve a more balanced return stream through volatility targeting of higher-risk asset classes;* Obtain an overview of various defensive strategies, and learn which strategies offer the most reliable and affordable protection;* Be equipped with a set of rules that allows for the early detection of strategies or managers that have faded.Strategic Risk Management is a thought-provoking resource for developing your portfolio design and risk management skills.

Foreword by Martin LeibowitzPreface by Sandy RattrayChapter 1: Seeking Crisis AlphaChapter 2: Can Portfolios Be Crisis Proofed?Chapter 3: Risk Management via Volatility TargetingChapter 4: Strategic RebalancingChapter 5: Drawdown ControlChapter 6: Man versus MachineChapter 7: Out-of-Sample Evidence from the COVID-19 Equity SellofNotesIndex