That the market’s recent rout was accompanied by rising levels of predicted volatility is hardly surprising. The magnitude of the increase, however, was another story.

Using the Russell 1000 as our sample US Equities portfolio, we set out to compare today’s exposures to the AX-US4 Tech sector industry factors with their 1999 counterpart.

Looking back at our work over the past couple of months, we have identified the 10 most significant correlation pairs that multi-asset class investors should focus on at the moment.

Even though markets seem to have shifted back to ‘risk-off’ mode we believe that the political uncertainty in Europe is likely to keep the greenback supported against its European rivals. 

Wednesday’s sell-off in global markets clearly had an impact on risk, as factor volatility soared.

Yesterday, October 10, the factor gave back some return, and in many cases the return was larger than what would have been expected given the risk forecast on October 9.

In an eerie reminder of the European debt crisis of 2010-2012, the Italian government has seen its financing rates rise dramatically over the past couple of months.

What caused the financial crisis? Does anyone actually know? Was it lack of regulation or de-regulation? Or, was it lack of understanding of the significance and the complexity of the ...