Lucas Laskey | BCA Research

Portfolio

Gold As A Strategic Asset: Liquidity, Risk, And Institutional Practice

We have received several questions from clients regarding practical issues surrounding strategic positions on gold. We find that gold is liquid and relatively inexpensive to trade while being a reliable diversifier that provides enough excess returns to account for loss in yield.

Lucas Laskey 08 Apr 2026

FICC

In Search Of Inflation And Geopolitical Hedges

The Iran war provides a timely motivation for examining how the main financial asset classes and commodity sectors perform across different inflation regimes and during periods of elevated geopolitical risk.

Roukaya Ibrahim, Lucas Laskey 07 Apr 2026

Portfolio

Macro Regime Indicators (MRI): Forecasting The Growth Inflation Matrix

We introduce our Macro Regime Indicators (MRI), a framework for forecasting growth and inflation surprises in the US. The MRI on the economy shows no substantial mispricing in either growth or inflation over the next 12 months.

Lucas Laskey 23 Feb 2026

Portfolio

2025 GAA Capital Market Assumptions: Revamped

We revamp several of our methodologies in this edition of our return assumptions. We estimate that a US 60/40 portfolio will return 6.1% over the next 10 years. This is slightly below the return assumptions for US pension funds. Investors can obtain better returns by diversifying internationally and to alternative assets.

Lucas Laskey, Xiaoli Tang, Chen Xu, Juan Manuel Correa 29 Aug 2025

Portfolio

Concentration Doesn’t Matter

Using stock-level data for MSCI ACWI country indices going back to 1984 for Developed markets and 1988 for Emerging markets, we find that market concentration adds little predictive power for long term forward returns. Whatever predictive power it has disappears once we include traditional metrics like value and size. The same is true for idiosyncratic index risk. Index concentration is just not very important for determining risk and return in equity markets.

Lucas Laskey 30 Jul 2025

CoreMacro

Dilution: The Silent Drag On Equity Returns (Part 1)

Dilution is one of the two main reasons why EM EPS has been much weaker than EM GDP and EM non-diluted profits. We calculate “pure” dilution – adjusted for companies’ inclusion and exclusion from the stock index – for various bourses around the world. To our knowledge, this is the first time this analysis has been conducted.

Rajeeb Pramanik, Arthur Budaghyan, Lucas Laskey 26 Jun 2025

Equities

US High-Quality Strategy: Value Leads The Way

The USHQ portfolios kept pace with their benchmarks, as the Value factor led the factor landscape.

Lucas Laskey 07 Jun 2024

Equities

Macro Score Update: Sector Model Upgrades Industrials And Consumer Discretionary To Overweight

Global Equity Score remains bullish. Major upgrades were made to Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, and Communication Services in the Sector Model. The Style Indicator continues to favor Large-Cap Value.

Pratik Bhanuse, Lucas Laskey 05 Jun 2024

Portfolio

GAA Quant Model Updates

At the asset class level, the GAA Quant model is overweight equities, underweight bonds, and neutral cash.

Pratik Bhanuse, Lucas Laskey 04 Jun 2024

Equities

US High-Quality Strategy: Navigating The Landing

This month both the USHQ and SMID portfolios saw a downturn due to the idiosyncratic risk from the Powell's dovish stance in the May FOMC meeting. However, the Safety, Value, and Quality outperformed, resulting in a 4.13% return in BCA Score L/S.

Lucas Laskey 06 May 2024