Institutions’ Return Expectations Across Assets and Time

Expectations about future returns are central to long-term institutional investment decisions. In this breakfast talk, Professor Magnus Dahlquist presents new research on how institutional investors form their return expectations, how these expectations evolve over time and across asset classes, and how they are reflected in asset managers’ financial portfolios.

Asset managers, investment consultants, wealth advisors, public pension funds, and professional forecasters provide capital market assumptions that reveal their return expectations. Recent research by Magnus Dahlquist and Markus Ibert, published in leading finance journals, this breakfast talk addresses the following questions:

• How are return expectations formed?
• How do they evolve over time and differ across institutions?
• How are return expectations reflected in asset managers’ financial portfolios?

Magnus Dahlquist is the Handelsbanken Professor of Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics. His research and teaching focus on asset management, asset pricing, and international finance, with recent work providing empirical evidence on institutional return expectations and portfolio choice. In addition to his academic work, he serves on several boards and investment committees, including the Expert Council to the Norwegian Ministry of Finance for the Government Pension Fund Global (commonly known as the oil fund) and an expert group evaluating the Danish ATP’s investment strategy.