What Has Generated Alpha This Year?

(Before It's News)

It only makes sense in this “good news is bad news” market that the best outperformance this year has been achieved by being ultimately contrarian and fading the crowd. As BofAML warns, 2015 is another year of position-driven alpha as selling the 10 most-overweight stocks held by active managers and buying the 10 most-underweight stocks crated a stunning 17 percentage point spread this year…

BofAML sees risk this positioning trade continues.

Consultants may be helping to perpetuate it, given they have honed in active share as a key metric for fund managers, which has forced managers into a crowded subset of similar holdings (typically smaller, more idiosyncratic stocks).
 

• World’s Largest Leveraged ETF Halts Orders, Citing “Liquidity Constraints”
• Someone Just Placed A Huge Upside Bet In The Silver Market
• Green Gestapo: EPA Spends $75 Million a Year on SWAT Teams
• Brazil Faces Unemployment “Crisis”, As Retail Sales Plunge, Rousseff Blasts “Coup-Mongers”
• Paul Craig Roberts On The MH-17 Report: “Only An Idiot Would Believe It”
• Billionaire Paul Singer Says Gold Under-Owned, As Precious Metals Rally
• Missed The Democrat Debate? The Taiwanese Animators Summarize It In One Cartoon
• Gold and Gold Stocks – How to Recognize an Emerging Bull Market
• SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts – Scraping Them Off the Sidewalk
• Whose FX Reserves Suffered The Most During The “China Tantrum”? Goldman Has The Answer