Equities & Equity Alternatives Forum 2019 | [i3] Investment Innovation Institute | 25 February 2019 | Pullman Melbourne On The Park, 192 Wellington Parade, Melbourne VIC 3002, Australia

Technology has become an increasingly important part of equity investing as investors start to make use of large, and sometimes unexplored, datasets, while the analytical capabilities of ever more powerful computers continue to improve.

Yet, 2018 was a difficult year for equity factor investment strategies as many of these strategies did poorly, all at the same time. It has led some early adopters, including Danish pension fund PKA, to revisit some of their previous assumptions.

Still, the idea that there are no broad and persistent premia that arise out of the different interests pursued by the various types of investors seems equally unlikely.

So where to from here? Is this merely a glitch in the continued rise of factor strategies or have markets morphed into a new beast where investors will need to rely more on opportunistic dislocations in the markets?

Or are we at the cusp of a return of mean reversion, where more fundamentally driven strategies, including value strategies, will thrive? But what is the mean? Are we reverting back to historical averages, or are we dealing with a new paradigm?

In this 4th annual forum for equities professionals, we explore these themes and more.

We will discuss:
• New research on hedge fund, examining their behaviour from the perspective of peer groups
• Emerging markets: Is it all about China?
• ESG, Sustainable Development Goals and Impact: What next?
• Big data, machine learning and all things quant: Data mining or information advantage?