Click on one of the headings to the right to view strategy-specific materials.

Fact Sheets

As of 12/31/09 Quarterly strategy data including characteristics, top holdings and performance.

Manager Commentaries

As of 12/31/09 Quarterly commentary on market conditions and portfolio positioning.

White Papers

Click on one of the links below to jump to a summary of the white paper, or click directly on the "download" link to open the full version pdf. More white papers written by our colleagues at investment subsidiaries of BNY Mellon Asset Management can be found by following this link to the BNYM AM Knowledge Database.

Once a year, The Boston Company’s Small Cap Growth Team holds an intensive off-site review of the worldwide investment landscape. Through this process, the team identifies distinctive investment themes that they believe will influence the investing climate over the next year or longer. While the team focuses on the mid-and small-cap growth equity asset class, these themes are valuable for any investor regardless of capitalization or style.
Download - Return to list

The staggering growth of emerging market economies has led to a new dynamic in global consumerism. Increasing wealth and modernization across these markets is creating a new global middle class, which will likely become tomorrow's most important consumer base. In order to access this new middle class, investors must look beyond the more popular emerging market indices or global multinational corporations and consider smaller, more domestic-driven companies.
Download - Return to list

Financial and economic events have caused many investors to pause and question whether the reward delivered by equities is worth the risk, particularly non-US stocks with the additional currency exposure. However, it would be unwise to dismiss an important source of global capital that provides a wide range of opportunities not readily available in other asset classes.
Download - Return to list

Lost in all of the challenging news affecting the US economy is the strong case to be made for investing in equities. An inflection point in the market could be closer at hand than most anticipate, and the present market environment favors active management. Because valuation spreads are at historically wide levels, active managers have opportunities across a multitude of sectors to identify the strongest revaluation candidates, while avoiding less-appealing laggards.
Download - Return to list

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index surged to dizzying heights in October 2007, ending the month with a five-year annualized return of 35% in US dollars. The bull market traced its roots to a solid and sustained period of earnings growth and profit-margin improvement. Valuations eventually expanded, with China and India trading above 20x P/E, and the Index, as a whole, priced at a premium to US and developed market equities. Commentators pushed the theory of Emerging Markets decoupling, which suggested that the likes of India, China and Brazil could continue their brisk growth prospects despite a possible recession in the US and developed markets.
Download - Return to list

IP Video is a broad concept commonly defined as any video stream that is transmitted over a network using internet protocol technology. One of the most recognizable subsets of IP Video is the video content found on the web accessed through internet browsers. As numerous applications of online video have emerged, whether it be short form (user generated clips, sports highlights, news clips) or long form (TV shows, movies, sports events), online video streaming has experienced strong global adoption among consumers.
Download - Return to list

The promise of personalized medicine has historically been stymied by technical challenges as the tools available were not only costly but slow and cumbersome. However, as analytical speeds increase and costs simultaneously decline, there are opportunities across the healthcare sector to capitalize on the wealth of data being produced.
Download - Return to list

As the prices of commodities have soared over the past few years, many consumers and investors are wondering, how much longer can it last? Since the last economic trough in 2001 and 2002, gold is up 211%, natural gas 322%, crude oil 334%, silver 349%, and copper 485%! While many economists and statisticians are waiting for prices to revert to a historical mean, we are reminded of a quote from the economist John Maynard Keynes, "in the long run we are all dead." Indeed, business cycles all occur with a boom and bust period, but there appears to be something larger at work as global economies are cooling and commodities prices remain stubbornly high.
Download - Return to list

Over the past 30 years, there have been temporary grain spikes, mostly due to weather-related supply shocks. In each case, these periods were short-lived and prices ultimately returned to longterm averages with the following year's harvest. However, we believe this spike is different. Grain stocks are at dangerously low levels, yet key growth drivers - the step up in government-mandated bio fuel programs and strong demand from emerging markets - are likely to continue for the next 18 to 24 months. This combination of low-ending stocks and unprecedented demand growth suggests current elevated prices are sustainable in the intermediate term, perhaps longer.
Download - Return to list

The superb absolute performance in the MSCI EAFE and EM asset classes over the past five years has been driven by an intoxicating mix of low global interest rates, easy credit conditions, an explosion in private equity LBO and M&A activity, surging GDP growth in Emerging Markets (primarily China and India), and the strongest global earnings and profitability boom that has taken place in the past four decades.
Download - Return to list

At the height of the US tech bubble in the late '90s, an incredible market narrowness unfolded that made it very difficult for active management strategies to outperform unless risk was eschewed in favor of a concentrated portfolio of very similar stocks. The characteristics of those stocks bear a striking resemblance to those that are driving the MSCI EM index ever higher today. That is, they were large cap and expensive.
Download - Return to list