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Improving traditional risk parity strategies by considering more appropriate risk measures than historical volatility
Lyxor – Improving traditional risk parity strategies by considering more appropriate risk measures than historical volatility
Risk parity is a generic term used by the asset management industry to designate portfolio construction methodologies based on risk budgeting. Whereas the standard approach to risk parity is used to design a well-diversified strategy, a new generation of risk parity strategies is emerging that considers more sophisticated risk measures.
WHAT IS THE ORIGINAL RISK PARITY STRATEGY?
Since 2008, risk parity is a popular approach to building well-diversified portfolios placing risk management at the heart of the portfolio construction process. This explains why an increasing number of pension funds and other institutional investors are now using this approach both within asset classes, and notably for the development of smart beta equity and bond benchmarks, and across asset classes, that is for the redefinition of their long-term investment policy portfolios.
This methodology ensures that the risk contributions will be identical for all constituent assets of the portfolio. The attractive performance of such strategies in recent years undoubtedly explains the success of risk parity diversified funds based on equities, bonds and commodities. For instance, Invesco manages about USD 22 billion using a risk parity strategy. Another commercial success is Bridgewater’s “All Weather Fund”, which is one of the largest hedge funds in the world.
TRADITIONAL RISK PARITY STRATEGIES SUFFER FROM A NUMBER OF SHORTCOMINGS
A risk parity portfolio is typically defined by considering volatility as the risk measure. However, these strategies also suffer from a number of shortcomings.
Standard approaches to risk parity are based on portfolio volatility as the risk measure, implying that upside risk is penalized as much as downside risk in obvious contradiction with investors’ preferences.
Moreover it is not obvious indeed that historical volatility of market returns has the same meaning for equities, sovereign bonds, corporate bonds, inflation-linked bonds, commodities, etc. In particular, market volatility does not fully reflect the risk taken by an investor when investing in bonds, because it only partially incorporates default risk. For example, the recent crisis in the Eurozone sovereign bond markets has not been accompanied by a massive increase in the historical market volatility.
Typical risk parity strategies inevitably involve a substantial overweighting of bonds with respect to equities, which might be a problem in a low bond yield environment, with mean-reversion implying that a drop in long-term bond prices might be more likely than a further increase in bond prices. More generally, risk parity strategies do not take into account changing economic environments and in particular time-varying risk premia.
Perhaps as a consequence of these shortcomings, the performance of risk parity funds has been disappointing overall in 2013. Indeed, most of them posted negative or flat performances in a context of strong equity returns. Moreover, dispersion among their performances was high, with as much as a 20% difference between the best and worst performers.
RISK PARITY NEW GENERATION: WHY DIRECTIONAL RISKS MATTER
A new generation of risk parity strategies – sometimes known as conditional risk parity strategies to emphasize their higher degree of reactivity to changes in market conditions – introduces a new dimension, which is the directional risk, as reflected in particular in the first moment (expected return) and third moment (skewness) of asset return distributions, in addition to volatility.
This new approach recognizes that risk cannot only be summarized as the daily fluctuations of prices. In Exhibit 1, the prices of three assets are reported with the same 20% volatility, For the standard risk parity approach, there is no difference between the three assets because they present the same volatility patterns. For the conditional risk parity approach, the three assets may not present the same risk patterns because they do not have, for instance, the same directional risks as can be seen by the very different trends.
For instance, if we consider a standard risk parity portfolio of equities and bonds, we notice that the allocation is the same in June 2008 and July 2013. This implies that these two periods present the same patterns in terms of relative levels of stock and bond volatility.. However, these two periods vastly differ in terms of directional risks as can be measured through valuation, trend, risk premium, economic condition, etc.
By reintroducing expected returns into the risk measure, the conditional risk parity strategy corrects one drawback of the traditional risk parity, which is its lack of sensitivity to yield levels. The use of conditional risk parity strategies avoid the sample dependency to the historical market volatility of bond returns and overweighting of bonds in a low interest rate environment. This new generation of risk parity strategies is therefore better equipped to deal with the rising interest rate challenge.
In this framework, risk parity becomes a robust active management model, which is less aggressive than the Markowitz model. This approach is therefore an interesting alternative to traditional active management approaches when portfolio managers want active management without concentrating their portfolios on a small number of aggressive bets. This explains why conditional risk parity strategies are also often called active risk parity strategies by the asset management industry.
Since Trump began imposing tariff—starting with Colombia last week—global markets have been in turmoil. The latest round of tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, with threats extending to the EU, has triggered sharp declines across risk assets. Canada and Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs have added to the uncertainty, setting the stage for further volatility.
This reaction mirrors last year’s turmoil following the BOJ’s rate hike, reinforcing how macroeconomic shocks ripple through liquid markets like crypto. As capital swiftly reallocates, bitcoin’s dominance surged past 61.5%. With more geopolitical and economic shifts potentially ahead, we are monitoring bitcoin’s sensitivity to global financial conditions, which will remain a key factor for its price action.
Market Highlights
Trump imposes tariffs on imported goods
Trump imposed tariffs on all imported goods from Canada, Mexico and China, setting the stage for a trade war with US trading partners.
This brings volatility and uncertainty to risk assets, creating short-term headwinds that impacted crypto assets more heavily since it was the only market open during the weekend.
SEC eases crypto custody rules
SEC replaced SAB 121 (crypto custody as balance sheet liabilities) with SAB 122, letting firms assess liabilities under the current accounting standards in the US and worldwide.
This has made it more feasible for US banks to custody crypto and could encourage greater institutional participation, enhancing market liquidity.
In-kind bitcoin redemptions proposal
Nasdaq proposed in-kind BTC redemptions for bitcoin ETFs, with the potential to improve efficiency and reduce costs for issuers and investors.
The approval could make BTC ETFs more attractive to institutions and market makers by streamlining operations and capital efficiency, fostering a stronger ETF market for BTC.
Market Metrics
Trump’s tariff announcements on Friday created a strong headwind for digital assets at the end of last week, as crypto was the only liquid market open during the weekend. The NCITM responded with a 9.1% decline, losing its lead as the best performing asset YTD, but still up 3.0% in 2025. Despite recent headwinds, advancements in US crypto regulation and the steady pace of institutional adoption remain strong tailwinds for crypto as 2025 progresses.
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