Hedging Inflation Internationally

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Abstract
The objective of this paper is to explore and identify inflation as it is embedded in a broad range of asset classes beyond simply TIPS, oil, gold and real estate. The analysis is conducted primarily from the perspective of a United States investor however the results are validated across a range of countries that span the developed and emerging world including resource intense economies and those that have previously experienced hyperinflation. We find that an investor who is looking for a reasonable positive real return of 4.5% while minimizing the downside with respect to inflation will have an allocation that consists primarily of short-term bonds, longer-term bonds, some gold, some oil, and some emerging market equities. The weight of gold and oil together is less than 10% of the portfolio and is not always relevant for all countries. We also find that TIPS are only slightly effective for protecting against inflation conditional on an investor using a group of asset classes. The out-of-sample performance of the real return optimizations are quite promising, providing an emulative inflation protection strategy for international investors.

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