Cliff's Perspectives

Asness uses his Perspectives column to take on the questions he finds most misunderstood: why value and momentum work, whether markets are getting less efficient, what investors are really paying for in private equity, and why backward-looking average returns can mislead. The essays are written in his own voice, with plenty of asides, but each rests on the research AQR publishes in journals.

For readers trained on textbook finance, these pieces show how an academic quant who runs real money weighs theory against the evidence. Volatility Laundering, for example, argues that the smooth returns of private assets are partly a product of infrequent marking, and that some investors are glad to pay for that. The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis argues that social media, indexing and low rates may have made prices less rational than they were a generation ago.

Read a few of the recent essays, then follow the links in each to the underlying AQR papers if you want the formal version.