Latest insights

Merger Arbitrage is a sophisticated investment strategy that capitalizes on the price difference between a target company's stock price in the market and the acquisition price during mergers and acquisitions.

We have previously examined the equity/bond allocation and asked, ‘Is 40/30/30 the new 60/40?’ Well, yes, we think it is. Our work shows a long-term correlation between equities and fixed income that is frighteningly close to 1.0. This increased correlation fundamentally alters the effectiveness of traditional portfolio construction.

As we enter 2025, the arrival of a new President in the White House is generating a great deal of uncertainty. Merger arbitrage (M&A) strategies are no exception to the question: What impact can we expect from the change of administration on this asset class ?

Damien Vergnaud, portfolio manager in Candriam's alternative strategies team, presents his study on index rebalancing. It highlights the effects of these transactions on investors' portfolios, and the importance of anticipating them by combining various approaches.

Has commercial real estate reached its inflection point? With little transaction activity, price and index data are generated with a lag. Market prices can change much more rapidly than they can be aggregated and reported. Investors must rely on fundamental analysis and experience more than data to time the recovery.

2022 was a landmark year for monetary policy, with Central banks shifting priority from supporting growth to taming inflation.

With the onset of the inflationary cycle and the change in central bank monetary policy, markets have entered a new paradigm, leaving investors uncertain as to the direction that markets will take next, and the timing of the transition into the next phase of the economic cycle.

If the smile measures how the portfolio value reacts to changes in the underlying markets, then maybe we should measure the smiles – and this is what our investment team has been doing.