Some of the most powerful tools in today’s investment playbook began as academic arguments. But they did not practice until they went from the page and the portfolio managers, risk teams and product designers. The efficient frontier of Harry Markvitz, Bill Sharp’s Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), Eugene Fama and Kenneth French’s styling factor, and Edward Qian’s Risk Equal Streak started as Journal arguments. Their views now sit inside the world portfolio guidelines, ETF rules books and risk dashboards. The leap from theory to the relevance of the real world gives high quality research to live.
Celebrates as CFA Institute Research and Policy Center 80Wan Financial Analysts Journal’s anniversary And 60Wan Anniversary of the Research Foundation, this is a suitable time for investment professionals to reflect the impact of physician-relevant research on industry development.
Highlighting the practitioner-relevant insight is at the core of Hillsdale Investment Management-CFA Society Toronto Research Award, which is accepting submissions for 2025. Any academic or businessman can present his research for consideration, regardless of their geographical location. Any original, unpublished work is considered that highlights Canada’s capital markets and helps investors to allocate capital more wisely. The subject areas include public and private market rule, stability and market microstructure. The deadline is coming fast (June 27).
Previous winners include a six-furrow model in line with Canadian equities that help portfolio managers navigate the “Factor Zoo”, a study when currency hedging adds value to International Equity Fund, and intricate instrument allowances how to affect mutual fund performance and risk, analysis of analysis.
Scholarship only changes behavior when it resolves a concrete problem and comes in a form that investors can apply. The reference to the market makes that difficult. A factor model that works in one field, can falter in another due to differences in industries, rules, and investor behavior. This is why competitions such as Hillsdale Award-Focused on Juda-specific research helps to travel faster and focus and land with greater impacts.
Research in Action: 3 Hillsdale Award winning papers
- Navigating Canada’s Factor Zoo (2024) introduced a six-work model produced on three decades of data of Canadian equity returns, giving portfolio managers a clear, evidence-based shortlist for factor investment. Using the CFMRC-TSX and Compustat files from July 1991 to December 2022, authors measured 17 widely quoted style factors in 11 academic outlines and run excesses, spread, and discrepancy-value assessment tests. Classic HML and UMD signals once added profitability, investment, and incorrectly, including variables. The data pointed to six variables (market, size, monthly-degraded value, returns-on-equity, expected growth, and post-kami-washana drift), which continuously explains Canadian returns compared to any heritage model. This result trimmed the “Factor Zoo” for a managerial business toolkit for screening, atribution and product design. This recognizes that global multiformer products may be incorrectly aligning with local risk premiere.
- Currency hedging and tracking error (2023) provided evidence that actively hedging of Forex Exposure with currency could raise the International Equity Fund performance. It gave evidence-based guidance to managers when FX hedging pays. The study matched 55,000 forward contracts with 1,279 US-regulated International Equity Fund (2004-2019) and users to “exposure manager,” “sometimes users,” and “non-use users”. Organized Hazars cut benchmark-counter instability by about one percentage points and improved unhealthy peers by about 120 basis points (BPS) per year, benefits that were the largest during the FX-Volatil Quarter. Forward books are tilted to currencies with favorable carry and Momentum profiles, indicating that a disciplined overlay can act as both a risk-control and a minor return engine. The counter-factual test suggested that non-users left for 40 to 60 bps annual performance on the table. The paper supplies the CIO with a quantitative threshold when the cost of the forward is likely to be rewarded and a template to connect the hedge ratio to the currency-intent signals.
- The complex instrument allowance in mutual funds (2020) revealed evidence that mutual funds using leverages, derivatives, and other complex instruments lead to returns and increase negative risk, indicate fund boards and regulators that low restrictions can hurt investors. N-SAR filing for the 4,793 US Domestic Equity Fund (2000-2015), authors created a “allowance score” for leverages, derivatives and Ilykid-asset permissions, then connected those permissions with daily performance and risk. The fund with wide latitudes performed lesser than a 1.3 per cent of the four-factor alpha and took her to the high market beta and negative semivarian in bear markets, especially in bear markets. The derivative authorities showed the strongest negative relationship for risk-doubtful returns, while better board oversight and large fund size reduced the drag. Conclusions give trustees and regulators a data-supported precaution: expanding a toolbox of a fund without monitoring can lead to high volatility and low investor welfare.
(See all previous winning research papers)
Why does it matter to a comprehensive investment community
- Sharp tool: The winning paper often updates factor libraries, hedging templates, or governance checklists that can test teams A/B in live portfolio.
- Diversity of thought: A global writer who examines a mid-size market helps reduce the prejudice of the pool house and brings new ideas across the boundaries.
- Rapid lifting: Because this award sits inside a professional body, useful conclusions reach the physicians, compressing time from direct research to real world application.
Prize details
- judge: Each submission is judged by a panel of CFA Charter Holders. This means only clear, test-testing-testing and practical relevance with the review process of research.
- award: The award, which comes with $ 10,000 (CAD) award, helps to empower the winning researchers, to continue ground-breaking research through flexible funding they can redirect for additional research funding, conference travel, or their next projects, attaching to string without string.
- High visibility with investment professionals: Winner paper and author gain visibility between more than 11,500 CFA charter holders and a comprehensive global CFA institute community in Canada. Publication can lead to a strong citation speed and, more important, adoption rapidly in behavior. CFA Society Toronto’s annual investment dinner unveiled the winning paper, promoted and published through society press channels AnalystCFA Society quarterly magazine of Toronto.
How to present
- submission deadline: 27 June 2025, 23:59 and
- Eligibility: Open to global researchers; Submission should focus on Canadian Capital Markets.
- Participant: Educationists (Students and Professors) and Physicians Paper requirements: A 1,500 to 2,000-word executive summary and a complete, unpublished research paper not under consideration.
- How to present: Online https://www.cfatoronto.ca/awards-scholarships/researchaward
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