Nelson Yu
28 Years at AB|32 Years of Experience
Nelson Yu is a Senior Vice President, Head of Equities and a member of the firm’s Operating Committee. As Head of Equities, he is responsible for the management and strategic growth of AB’s equities business and investment decisions across the department. Since 1993, Yu has experience generating investment success in global equity markets by joining fundamental research with rigorous quantitative methods. He joined AB in 1997 as a programmer and analyst, and served as head of Quantitative Equity Research from 2014–2021. Since 2017, Yu also served as head of Multi-Style Core Equity strategies, with over $10 billion in assets. Most recently, he was CIO of Equities Investment Sciences and Insights, which brings together resources across Data Science, Quantitative Research, Advisory Services, Risk and Global Execution to deliver differentiated capabilities and insights to AB’s equities investment platform. Prior to joining AB, Yu was a supervising consultant at Grant Thornton. He holds a BSE in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Yu is a CFA charterholder. Location: New York
Published Work
As volatility rises, staying invested is a strategic priority for capturing long-term return potential in a broadening market.
Risk management is being put to the test in 2025. How can equity portfolio teams cope with multiple hazards across equity markets this year?
Quality has become a popular buzzword in equity investing. But what does it really mean?
Political uncertainty and volatility create fertile ground for active investors to find companies that can successfully navigate a new era.
Our investment heads discuss the forces that will shape growth, interest rates and businesses around the world.
Thematic portfolios that tap into big global trends offer exciting opportunities for equity investors. But the devil is in the detail.
Market conditions are shifting fast. But making impulsive changes to equity portfolios and allocations can be counterproductive.
How can equity investors build portfolios that capture the potential of exciting thematic stories?
Equity markets have plenty to offer investors in sectors and regions that have been eclipsed by the largest stocks this year.
Despite narrow market concentration, we see opportunities in high-quality stocks that haven’t yet been rewarded.
Investors need a better grasp of risk-management tools to gauge a portfolio’s strategic resilience in a rapidly changing world.
Too many companies with solid earnings growth haven’t been rewarded in narrow equity markets. That may be about to change.
With inflation and interest rates in transition, it's time to take a fresh look at the forces driving business models, profitability and equity returns.
It’s hard to chart a course through equity markets in times of uncertainty. Here are our thoughts on some of the big questions on investors’ minds today.
What types of equity allocations will be capable of withstanding unpredictable crosswinds in the year ahead?
Investors are entering the new year with many concerns about macroeconomic conditions and market volatility. The heads of our fixed-income, equities and alternatives businesses lay out some of the key investment storylines to watch in 2024.
Volatility is a challenge that has vexed equity investors for decades and has been amplified in today's low interest-rate environment. As many investors reach for higher-return assets to help meet future obligations, they are likely to be more exposed to the higher inherent volatility that stocks add to an allocation. In this paper, we examine the root causes of volatility to provide a holistic perspective on risk-management solutions for the current complex environment. Distinguishing between market risk, factor risk and stock-specific risk can help investors identify the most appropriate strategic solutions to combat volatility and ensure that they are compensated for the risk in their equity portfolios.
With mounting risks in financial markets, cluster analysis should play an increasing role in an investing toolkit. Here's what investors need to know about how it works—and what to ask asset managers—to know whether it's being applied effectively to an equity portfolio.
Figuring out how to use big data is the next frontier for the asset-management industry. Equity investors must have the right culture—and ask the right questions—to successfully integrate data science into research and investment processes.
What do airline ticket prices, car sales and thousands of corporate filings have in common? In each of these areas, we applied advanced big data techniques to tackle an equity investing conundrum that couldn't be solved by human researchers alone.
Rising rates are adding new risks to equity markets. Stocks of companies that are saddled with debt have underperformed recently. And leverage is especially high in sectors widely seen as safe havens.