Asset Allocation
Noël Amenc, Lionel Martellini: Two competing approaches are used in practice to build portfolios: bottom-up and top-down.
Author(s):
Professor of Finance, EDHEC Graduate School of BusinessHead of Research, Misys Asset Management Systems
Assistant Professor of Finance, Marshall School of Business
The bottom-up approach is the older and the more traditional, focusing on individual stock picking. The top-down approach gives more importance to the choice of different markets as opposed to individual security selection and, as such, emphasises the importance of asset allocation. Asset allocation consists of choosing the spread of different asset classes within the portfolio. There two separate steps in the asset allocation process. One first defines the long-term allocation, based on estimates of risk and return for each asset class. This is known as “strategic allocation“. Then, one can subsequently carry out dynamic adjustments based on short-term anticipations. This is known as “tactical allocation“.
| Type: | Working paper |
|---|---|
| Date: | le 01/11/2002 |
| Research Cluster : | Finance |
See Also
About EDHEC
Operating from campuses in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, EDHEC is one of the top 10 European business schools. Fully international and directly connected to the business world, EDHEC is a school for business, rather than a business school, where excellence in teaching and research focuses on innovation to stimulate entrepreneurship and creativity. EDHEC functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and produces innovative solutions valued by businesses. The School’s teaching philosophy, inspired by its award-winning research activities, focuses on “learning by doing”.
