Crowding continues to be a popular topic of conversation among investors. Crowded stocks can exhibit exacerbated pricing pressure when material information reaches the market. In addition, earnings releases can increase price volatility, making earnings a strong catalyst for crowded names.

China Evergrande’s liquidity issues continue to stir up fears among investors of a localized downturn that could send shockwaves across global markets. Plans by Hopson Development Holdings to acquire a 51% stake in Evergrande could provide at least some short-term wiggle room for the company to remedy its cash flow problems. Even if this proves to be a lifeline to Evergrande, there’s already evidence that the liquidity strain on Chinese real estate developers is spreading amid reports of ratings downgrades on Fantasia Holdings and Sinic Holdings due to missed debt payments.

China has been lighting up the news outlets lately with news of crypto crack downs and general regulatory tightening. However, another story has been brewing around China Evergrande and the potential ripple effects on the global economy from Evergrande’s impending default on portions of its $300+ billion in liabilities.

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve spent time analyzing what pockets of the market offer the most alpha opportunity for active managers. We found that the alpha opportunity ratio can be a useful metric to understand when and where managers have higher opportunity to align portfolio risk with their alpha ideas. This week, we’ll wrap up this analysis by using the alpha opportunity ratio in a slightly different way to answer the following question - can we put enough capital behind alpha opportunities?

In last week’s Factor Spotlight, we introduced the notion of the diversification ratio as a way to quantify the degree of diversification opportunity across a universe of securities. Using this metric, we analyzed the level of diversification available across various segments of the US market.

This week, we continue our analysis by highlighting the application of this ratio and offering a heuristic guide for understanding the attractiveness of stock picking within an analyst coverage universe.