AQR is one of the leading quant funds, and they had a difficult 2021, but they are bouncing back big with a new idea in ESG. Their new Sustainable Long-Short Equity Carbon Aware Fund will pick U.S. and foreign equity on a variety of ESG criteria with a net-zero carbon emissions target, but it will also short funds that aren’t meeting ESG standards. Most funds have stayed only on the positive end of things but CEO Cliff Asness believes shorts selling is a key tool that can be leveraged to reduce carbon emissions. Asness will be a portfolio manager on the funds, and his unique perspective on ESG will be critical in how the fund performs in the upcoming years.

FINSUM: Value quant funds like ESG suffered the last two years relative to the market but so far in 2021 AQR has seen huge inflows and its ESG strategy is part of that.

The direct/custom indexing firm GAMMA Investing got two new investors, riverFront Investment Holdings and Baird. Lorraine Wang is the CEO of GAMMA and supplies custom index-based accounts specifically for financial advisors. Before leading, GAMMA Wang was the head of ETF products and research at Invesco PowerShares. Now GAMMA specializes in custom indexing that tailors to the social, tax, and investment goals of its clients. As part of the investment RiverFront’s COO, Karrie Southall, and executive Director, Laura Thurow from Baird.

FINSUM: The number of firms getting bolstering their custom/direct indexing platforms is growing rapidly, and ESG’s growing prominence is a big part of that.

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