Before we dive into this week's topic on crowding, I wanted to let you know that a recording of our joint webinar with Qontigo: Macro Matters, Even for Fundamental Managers is now available to view on our website in case you missed the live webinar. We hope that you enjoy it.

In our last two editions of Factor Spotlight, we explored volatility’s unprecedented post-COVID rally as well as its recent hints at renormalization. As the dust continues to settle, there are strong indications that suggest that low volatility stocks are coming back into favor while high volatility stocks might take a back seat. During this transitionary period, we have seen quite a bit of turbulence in the Volatility factor.

Both low volatility and high volatility managers have been riding a rollercoaster, feeling strong pressures from both sides on portfolio performance. This week, in order to understand the practical impact of the Volatility factor on investment strategies, we will be applying our research to a real world portfolio management use case. The goal is not only to diagnose volatility’s influence on a portfolio but to take subsequent steps in mitigating unwanted risks and enhancing alpha potential.

Volatility continues spiraling downwards as the factor seemingly marches back to the beat of its old drum. As we highlighted in last week’s Factor Spotlight, Volatility spent almost the whole of 2020 skyrocketing with positive performance; however, performance since February 2021 would show that the factor may be coming back down to earth.

Volatility has spent almost the whole of 2020 terrorizing investor portfolios as it soared on a rocket ship of positive performance. From January 2020 to its peak in February 2021, we saw this factor rise by almost 20% on a cumulative basis.

In last week's edition of Factor Spotlight, we introduced our new partnership with S3 Partners along with the availability of S3's market-leading Short Interest, Crowding, and Securities Finance datasets on the Omega Point Platform. This week, we leverage this highly actionable dataset to glean more insight into the short interest landscape and highlight methods to help improve market analysis, idea generation, and portfolio construction workflows.