Asset-allocation and valuation research from GMO (Jeremy Grantham).

GMO's Usonian Japan Equity team analyses April 2026 draft revisions to Japan's Corporate Governance Code, focusing on how new FSA/TSX guidance raises the bar for boards to justify capital allocation—particularly idle cash—over boilerplate "comply or explain" disclosures. The piece maintains a constructive medium- to long-term view on Japanese equities, highlighting company-level governance catalysts while cautioning on policy risks from METI M&A guidance and FEFTA intervention.

GMO's November 2022 conference presentation outlines the firm's use of next-generation quantitative tools—particularly Natural Language Processing (NLP)—to build differentiated alpha models within its Systematic Equity framework. Researchers from GMO's Systematic Equity and Asset Allocation teams discuss how NLP infrastructure has evolved since the firm's early quantitative work in the 1980s to improve investment outcomes.

GMO's Ben Inker argues that the traditional 60/40 portfolio has become concentrated in expensive U.S. growth equities and tight-spread credit, leaving it priced for low single-digit real returns—echoing conditions last seen in 1999. The piece advocates a valuation-sensitive, globally diversified dynamic allocation approach, highlighting GMO's Benchmark-Free Allocation Strategy as a vehicle to improve risk-adjusted outcomes by rotating away from overvalued U.S. growth assets toward non-U.S. equities and value.

GMO's Asset Allocation team makes a high-conviction case for continued overweight in Japanese equities, citing accelerating corporate governance reform, ROE improvement, yen undervaluation, and persistently wide valuation dispersions—particularly in small-cap value. The piece recommends active, engagement-oriented strategies focused on small value stocks, which trade at a 38% discount to the broader market and at their 23rd historical percentile valuation.

GMO's Ben Inker argues that performance persistence among private equity managers has largely disappeared since 2000, meaning diversified institutional PE portfolios will tend to converge toward median returns regardless of manager-selection efforts. He concludes that investment committees should raise the bar for hiring PE managers, and that paying high fees for managers lacking full conviction is a poor use of capital relative to cheaper public market alternatives.

GMO's 40th annual investor conference covers a broad range of topics including inflation, China regulatory risk, the value vs. growth dislocation, ESG integration, real assets, quality investing, EM debt, Japan equities, and sovereign distressed credit. Presentations from senior portfolio managers and strategists reflect GMO's generally cautious stance on stretched valuations across equities and fixed income, with selective opportunities identified in value, EM, and real assets.