GMO’s Hancock on the Importance of Profitability

Overview

The quality factor is ranked second on the BI Factor Scorecard as higher-quality companies are beating lower-quality ones against a backdrop of a more defensive market. On this episode of Inside Active, host David Cohne, mutual fund and active-management analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, along with co-host and BI US quantitative strategist Christopher Cain, spoke with Tom Hancock, head of Focused Equity at GMO and portfolio manager for the GMO US Quality ETF (QLTY), about how the fund combines GMO’s history of integrating the quality factor in its research with the firm’s roots in value investing. They also discussed why profitability is such an important element of their quality-factor research, and how QLTY differs from its mutual fund counterpart.