Morgan Stanley IM: Overcoming Behavioral Biases - The Importance of Our Proprietary Portfolio Exercises

Understanding that we have biases is the first step, but what can we do to proactively overcome them? Within Eaton Vance Equity, we believe that having deep company-specific knowledge, training in financial statement analysis, and decades of collective experience are necessary, but insufficient, to achieve strong investment results. Since 2014, we have integrated the discipline of conducting Portfolio Exercises into our investment process, a differentiator in the way we manage money and an important element to our success.

^{RISK CONSIDERATIONS
There is no assurance that a portfolio will achieve its investment objective. Portfolios are subject to market risk, which is the possibility that the market values of securities owned by the fund will decline and that the value of fund shares may therefore be less than what you paid for them. Market values can change daily due to economic and other events (e.g. natural disasters, health crises, terrorism, conflicts and social unrest) that affect markets, countries, companies or governments. It is difficult to predict the timing, duration, and potential adverse effects (e.g. portfolio liquidity) of events. Accordingly, you can lose money investing in this portfolio. Please be aware that this portfolio may be subject to certain additional risks. In general, equities securities’ values also fluctuate in response to activities specific to a company. Stocks of small-and medium-capitalization companies entail special risks, such as limited product lines, markets and financial resources, and greater market volatility than securities of larger, more established companies. Illiquid securities may be more difficult to sell and value than publicly traded securities (liquidity risk). Non-diversified portfolios often invest in a more limited number of issuers. As such, changes in the financial condition or market value of a single issuer may cause greater volatility. Derivative instruments may disproportionately increase losses and have a significant impact on performance. They also may be subject to counterparty, liquidity, valuation, correlation and market risks.}