This year’s report features the mythological titan Atlas who lifts the world on his shoulders with the help of entrepreneurial innovations in artificial intelligence and an abundance of other profitable investment opportunities.

In The Golden Rule of Investing, from the Winter 2024 issue of the Journal of Alternative Investments, authors Pim van Vliet and Harald Lohre of Robeco find that a portfolio consisting of 45% low-volatility equities, 45% bonds, and 10% gold offers the best protection against downside volatility over a time horizon of one…

In 2023, while general markets experienced upswings, some segments saw declines. Here we offer some observations on 2023, armed with the wisdom of hindsight, as well as some foresight on the factors likely to impact thematic developments in 2024.

As 2024 kicks off, we explore the resurgence of the value factor since the Covid-19 vaccine announcement roughly three years ago, with insights from ten key graphs and analyses.

A soft landing narrative has become the overwhelming consensus view. According to this narrative, Powell and Lagarde have the rare opportunity of defeating inflation without tanking the economy in terms of rising unemployment. We think this is nothing short of a fairy tale outcome.

This year’s report examines three significant power dynamics. Firstly, the government’s fiscal policies present a challenge to central banks, altering the balance between inflation and economic growth. Secondly, the dominance of capital as a production factor is being challenged by labor, driven by reshoring and climate…

The theory and practice of quantitative investing, as we understand it today, kicked off in the 1950s. Leading the way were well-known academic models such as Markowitz’s Modern Portfolio Theory (1952), Sharpe’s Capital Asset Pricing Model (1964), and Fama’s Efficient Market Hypothesis (1970) – and, of course, the latter’s…

Thematic investing is a popular investment category that is usually done via fundamental approaches, where human portfolio managers and analysts identify themes and the companies benefiting from them. As successful as fundamental thematic investing has been, Robeco believes it has certain drawbacks that can be addressed by…

In The Term Structure of Machine Learning Alpha, from the Fall 2023 issue of The Journal of Financial Data Science, David Blitz, Matthias X. Hanauer, Tobias Hoogteijling, and Clint Howard of Robeco find that using a machine learning trading strategy designed for a three‑month predictive horizon outperformed an ML strategy…

This year’s summer read is a collection of 24 of the best Daily Sketches published by our Thematic Investing team on a daily basis. The collection covers how structural trends impact our lives in five key areas: in the home, at the office in the lab, on the economy and, well, on our planet!

Welcome to terra incognita, a new era in which the certainties that a generation of investors have grown so used to have started to crumble before our very eyes. Confusion has taken center stage on financial markets.

Investors seeking to make their bond portfolios more sustainable face a complex challenge. How can they reduce their carbon footprints while managing risk? Understanding the risks –and opportunities – within low-emission countries is crucial.

The stage is set for a thrilling finale of 2024. The Fed waited for the disinflation trend to become clear, even as unemployment was picking up. Did they wait too long?

Neobanks, which are challenging traditional banks with their digital-only banking services, have been growing fast and grabbing market share from conventional rivals worldwide. Now profitability is the focus and we believe the neobank era has truly arrived.

This analysis indicates there are plenty of alpha opportunities to be found across a multitude of climate solutions and so-called transition leaders, both in low- and high-emitting industries, and across developed and emerging markets.

As the recent accelerated pace of artificial intelligence development demonstrates, Transforming Technologies continue to evolve with implications for nearly every business and sector of the economy. Changing Sociodemographics – defined by slowing birth rates, longer lifespans, rising emerging market incomes, and increased…

When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, it created a wave of excitement around artificial intelligence (AI) among the general public, media, and across industries worldwide. Generative AI presents vast opportunities to transform various aspects of our personal and professional spheres. In a recent edition of the VBA…

This report is based on research commissioned by Robeco for its exclusive use, which was carried out in January 2024 by CoreData Research among 300 institutional and wholesale investors in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

While portfolio construction approaches have most often been considered two-dimensional (incorporating risk and return), investing has historically been a multi-dimensional endeavor, with sustainability the latest addition to multi-objective investing. This research paper introduces a multi-objective investment framework and…