Manager Crowding and Portfolio Construction

Oct 10, 2012

Following the “quant meltdown” of August 2007, market observers became concerned that quant strategies were leading to crowded trades. This paper analyzes the impact that a risk model used in portfolio construction has on manager crowding by identifying the drivers of crowding and by illustrating their impact.  A risk model’s effect on manager crowding depends, in part, on how alphas used by different managers are related to each other, and to the risk model factors. We explain how this works with some simple, intuitive examples, and with the aid of a well established analytical framework.