Celebrating 40 years
INVESTMENT STRATEGY

Systematic investing

BlackRock Systematic's1 investment capabilities span equity, fixed income and alternative asset classes to help provide tech-centered solutions designed to target specific risk and diversification characteristics.

Risk management and diversification cannot fully eliminate the risk of investment loss.

Portfolios powered by technology

Systematic investing combines alternative data, data science and deep human expertise to help modernize the way we invest and construct portfolios. By leveraging data-driven insights, scientific testing of investment ideas, and advanced computer modeling techniques, we constantly innovate new approaches as we seek to improve investment outcomes on behalf of our clients.

Next generation portfolio construction

AI-enabled decision-making and alpha research is paired with market expertise to maximize the economic soundness of investment ideas.

Data-driven insights

Detailed quantitative attribution helps constantly refine portfolios and targets distinct sources of return aiming to deliver specific investment outcomes.

Scientific testing

Quantitative data-analysis techniques yield scaled insights across large sets of securities, enabling high-breadth portfolios.

Disciplined construction

Scientific testing helps validate return potential, while simultaneously mitigating behavioral basis and cognitive errors.

Continuous refinement

Portfolio positions sized by disciplined risk budgeting and optimization processes seeks to balance a complex set of trade-offs in portfolio construction.

Using big data, AI, and human expertise to reimagine alpha

Today’s markets require us to rethink traditional investing methods, and an informational advantage can be key. With proprietary research, technology, and experienced investors at every step, our BlackRock Systematic team extracts signals from a sea of data – consistently transforming insights into alpha opportunities for our clients.
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Systematic insights

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40th Anniversary Video Transcript

Raffaele Savi, Global Head of BlackRock Systematic

I like to think that team has been -- active for over 40 years and I've been here for at least half of those.

Jeff Shen, PhD, Co-head and Co-CIO of Systematic Active Equity

I think, one thing that could be surprising is, how smart people are, but also how nice people are.

Ronald Kahn, PhD, Global Head of Systematic Investment Research

You know, one of the great things about the investment business is we do bring in people with a lot of different backgrounds, and that makes it I mean, I think it helps us make better investment decisions, but I also think it makes it a more interesting place to work.

Tom Parker, CFA, Chief Investment Officer, Systematic Fixed Income

You know, I think the most interesting thing is that we've always worried when people leave, we go, how are we going to replace them? What are we going to do? But, you know, quantitative techniques have one advantage is, the insights don't go down in the elevator. They stay in your model. And I always call them the ghost in the machine.

Raffaele:

We work really hard to turn innovation into consistency.

Ron:

We’re really a group that turns, you know, basically turns research and data into alpha.

And so research is at the heart of what we do. And so we have to keep innovating because the ideas that we use, they're all about informational advantages. So if you buy most Blackrock systematic products there's not a risk premia or behavioral, anomaly component to them. Most of what we do is informational advantage.

We identify data that tells us things that the market doesn't understand, but we know the market figures these things out eventually. So for us, we always need to be coming up with new things. And so I think we've never had a stronger culture of innovation and creativity that we have now.

Jeff:

Clients look at BlackRock and think it's a big place. So we always say that, while it's a big place at the same time, it's all about delivering the benefit of a scale for our clients. How can we leverage a scale of BlackRock, of Systematic, for the benefit of our clients?

And I think we can think of all this benefit of a scale in multiple dimensions, in a sense, and allow us to really get data that we wouldn't be able to get before, to really allow us to trade much more efficiently for our clients to leverage the benefit the scale, and also to have a diverse team that can cut across multiple disciplines, not only having the best of a computer scientist in the world, but also having the best economists in the world and have them work together to provide solutions for our clients.

Tom:

Alpha is the hardest game in town. You know, you're competing against Nobel Prize winners. You have geniuses, you know, large tech teams. And it's just everybody wants to be in that game and it's a zero sum game. And so that's always been the challenge. And we even gave ourselves two harder challenges.

So alpha is this amazingly hard challenge, doing alpha in fixed income where there's very little idiosyncratic risk is even a bigger challenge. And then saying you can actually gonna be market neutral is kind of an amazing challenge. And sometimes you kind of wish, oh, maybe we shoulda compromised some more or added more factor exposure out of more beta.

But there also is just a great feeling of satisfaction when you actually get things that work and you go, wow, we're competing with the best people in the world, the best finance people in the world, and winning.

Raffaele:

It's remarkable, I feel that truly the best is always yet to come. The best is always our next idea our next iteration. We've done incredible work, that's the team. I've been fortunate to be part of that team where a lot of people did a lot of incredible work-- there's so many more things that this team can do so I'm looking forward to all the future milestones.

Investing involves risks, including possible loss of principal.

Stock and bond values fluctuate in price so the value of your investment can go down depending upon market conditions. The two main risks related to fixed income investing are interest rate risk and credit risk. Typically, when interest rates rise, there is a corresponding decline in the market value of bonds. Credit risk refers to the possibility that the issuer of the bond will not be able to make principal and interest payments. The principal on mortgage- or asset-backed securities may be prepaid at any time, which will reduce the yield and market value of these securities. Obligations of US Government agencies and authorities are supported by varying degrees of credit but generally are not backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government. Investments in non-investment-grade debt securities (high-yield bonds or junk bonds) may be subject to greater market fluctuations and risk of default or loss of income and principal than securities in higher rating categories. Income from municipal bonds may be subject to state and local taxes and at times the alternative minimum tax.

The information and opinions contained in this material are derived from proprietary and non-proprietary sources deemed by BlackRock to be reliable, are not necessarily all inclusive and are not guaranteed as to accuracy. Investments named within this material may not necessarily be held in any accounts managed by BlackRock. Reliance upon information in this material is at the sole discretion of the reader. Statements concerning financial market trends are based on current market conditions, which will fluctuate. There is no guarantee that these investment strategies will perform well under all market conditions. Outlook and strategies are subject to change without notice.

Prepared by BlackRock Investment LLC. Member FINRA. © 2025 BlackRock, Inc. All Rights Reserved. BLACKROCK is a trademark of BlackRock, Inc. All other trademarks are those of their respective owners.

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Turning data into alpha: 40 years of systematic innovation

For decades, BlackRock’s Systematic team has been at the forefront of data-driven investing—transforming research and technology into alpha opportunities. Powered by scale, diverse talent, and a relentless drive to innovate, we’re redefining what’s possible in modern investing.

Our Systematic investing team

We believe a successful systematic investment platform must go beyond data and technology—it has to be powered by a talented team with a balance of attributes.

Raffaele Savi
Global Head of BlackRock Systematic and Co-CIO of Systematic Active Equities
Jeff Shen
Co-Head and Co-CIO of Systematic Active Equities
Tom Parker
CIO of Systematic Fixed Income

Investment strategies

Our systematic approach to investing can be applied across a spectrum of strategies. We manage both highly diversified and specialized investment capabilities to provide clients with solutions that can compliment their portfolios.

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Equities

Our systematic equity strategies are designed to deliver consistent and differentiated alpha opportunities to our clients. Our passion is combining insight and technology to generate compelling benchmark relative or absolute investment returns.

Long-only

Our data-driven insights and technology offer cost-efficient, risk-managed equity solutions aiming to help clients generate returns across an extensive opportunity set.

Partial long/short

Designed to deliver differentiated alpha opportunities by selecting stocks through optimized tilts, we seek to exploit market inefficiencies and minimize uncompensated risks.

Absolute return

Absolute return strategies use distinct sources of return to seek positive absolute returns in equity markets, irrespective of financial conditions.

Fixed income

Systematic fixed income strategies employ differentiated data-driven insights backed by disciplined risk management that seek to deliver differentiated portfolio outcomes to investors.

Enhanced

Enhanced building blocks seek to deliver consistent, high information ratio alpha by combining security selection insights with optimized portfolio construction.

Liquid alternatives

Our investment decisions use multiple, independent and risk management alpha models, seeking enhanced risk-adjusted returns with low correlations to broad asset classes.

Hedge funds

Seek to uncover alpha using relative value, directional and security selection strategies, across markets, with return profiles independent of traditional market betas.

Alternatives

Our liquid alternative strategies seek to generate idiosyncratic alpha, with low correlations to broad asset classes. Our alternative solutions are available across a full spectrum of broad and specialized investment capabilities including multi-strategies, global equity market neutral, and global macro.

Risk parity

Multi-asset strategies built by diversifying across sources of risk rather than by asset class.

Absolute return

Strategies that seek to deliver uncorrelated alpha through long/short investing.

Multi-alternatives

Strategies that employ our differentiated investment ideas using multiple, independent and risk-managed quantitative models, seeking uncorrelated returns across asset classes.

Factors

Factors are broad and persistent drivers of returns both in and across asset classes. BlackRock has been at the forefront of factor-based investing for decades and continues to innovate new strategies to help address clients’ investment challenges.

U.S. Equity Factor Rotation

Dynamically allocates to U.S. stocks based on their exposures to historically rewarded factors, using proprietary insights and a forecast of near-term alpha potential.

Market Advantage

Macro factor strategy seeking returns with resilience. Portfolio allocations based on risk, not capital, that aim to capture the economic drivers of return.

Style Advantage

Long/short style factor strategy seeking liquid and diversified absolute returns.

How does BlackRock’s Systematic team seek an edge in markets?

Discover how we leverage our breadth and scale to deliver client-driven solutions for institutional investors.
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