What are the assumptions of ERAA, StashAway’s investment framework?

StashAway’s Economic Regime-based Asset Allocation (“ERAA”) framework builds and manages portfolios by targeting different levels of risk and attempting to maximize net investment returns at each risk-point.

The framework is dynamic and strategic in nature, and it is built on 4 pillars: (i) Regime-based asset allocation, (ii) Risk Control, (iii) Valuation Gaps, and (iv) Managing Asset-specific Risk

 

The First Pillar (Regime-based Asset Allocation) is at the core of ERAA’s portfolio construction logic, and uses economic data to adjust the target strategic asset allocation at each risk level. The main assumption behind this pillar is that the economy ultimately drives medium term markets’ returns.

 

The Second Pillar (Risk Control) is the risk management layer of the framework, tasked with identifying cases in which economic data either are unclear or are not driving market behaviour. If the momentum (rate of change) of growth and/or inflation isn’t solid enough to provide predictive guidance, ERAA® adjusts our clients’ portfolios to an All-Weather strategy until the direction of economic data is clear again. The All-Weather strategy is designed to simultaneously protect capital and perform well in uncertain economic conditions.

 

The Third Pillar (Valuation Gaps) takes into account each asset class’ valuation to underweight overvalued assets and discover opportunities to overweight undervalued assets. Valuation Adjustments are based on economic regressions, and therefore are anchored around ERAA’s main assumption that the economy ultimately drives medium term markets’ returns.

 

The Fourth Pillar (Managing Asset-specific Risk) sets asset allocation limits based on the historical relative performance of each asset compared to the portfolio's same-risk benchmarks. Taking into account an asset's historical performance, ERAA® adjusts its maximum allocation. This ensures that any idiosyncratic drawdowns in a specific asset don't have an outsized impact on portfolio performance.

 

If you want to know more about ERAA read our white paper on StashAway’s investment framework.

 

StashAway’s Economic Regime-based Asset Allocation (“ERAA”) is a systematic, algorithm-based investment framework focused on strategic asset allocation. Some investors may think that it is purely systematic and does not include any element of human judgment is a limitation to this investment approach. However, the StashAway’s Investment Committee meets once a month to review the system’s recommendations and has an oversight function on the investment framework.

 

StashAway does not use leverage and does not take short positions, limiting the amount of investment opportunities available. This limitation is an active choice of StashAway, as we prefer a more straightforward investment style that targets medium-to-long term wealth accumulation while keeping risks under control.

 

As with any model, StashAway’s ERAA is data-dependent. It assumes that the data of average returns and risks of asset classes observed in past economic regimes would repeat itself. In reality, no models can guarantee that history will repeat itself.