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Let’s talk about Communication

S&P 500 Drops 90 points

Mid Caps Less Risky Than Large Caps?

Capturing and Evaluating Intentionality in Funds

A Look at Mexican Industries and the Potential Impact of the USMCA

Let’s talk about Communication

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Hamish Preston

Head of U.S. Equities

S&P Dow Jones Indices

One of the largest ever changes to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®) went into effect prior to the open on Monday 24th September, affecting around 10% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization.  In case you missed our previous announcements, here is a brief explanation of GICS, what changed, and why these changes went into effect.

What is GICS?  The Global Industry Classification Standard was created in 1999 to unify definitions about different market segments.  GICS assigns each company to one of the 158 (157 before September 24th) possible sub-industries, which then determine – in decreasing order of granularity – one of 68 possible industries, one of 24 possible industry groups, and one of 11 possible sectors.

Exhibit 1: GICS Hierarchy

What changed?  The GICS update involved expanding the Telecommunication Services sector to include some constituents from the Consumer Discretionary and Information Technology sectors.  Exhibit 2 shows the composition of the resulting sector, now named Communication Services, for large-cap U.S. companies (the area for each constituent is proportional to its weight in the sector).  You’ll notice a number of the so-called FAANGs are constituents.

Exhibit 2: Many FAANGs are constituents of the S&P 500 Communication Services sector

Why did these changes happen?  The manner in which people, businesses, and communities communicate has changed dramatically.  These developments didn’t occur overnight but they do mean that communications is now far broader than telecoms.  The chairman of our Index Committee, David Blitzer, provided greater clarity on the thinking behind the sector in a prior post.  Here is one of his charts.

Exhibit 3: The way we communicate has changed over time

Have similar changes happened before?  Yes, the last GICS update occurred in September 2016 when Real Estate became a stand-alone sector (previously, it was part of Financials).  More broadly, the GICS changes recognize only the latest evolution (or revolution) in the industries that compose our markets and economies.  As we highlighted in a recent paper, the first industrial revolution was associated with Railroads – hugely important in 1900 and accounting for more than 50% of the U.S. equity market.  The second industrial revolution was associated with mechanization of manufacturing; the Manufacturing sector dominated U.S. equities by 1950.

Exhibit 4: Sector changes reflect the evolution in industries that compose our markets

The recent updates to GICS reflect changes to the way we communicate, and the sensitivities (especially to advertising revenues) that these communications companies share.  Remembering these sensitivities may be particularly useful for market participants looking to understand the performance of communications companies: concerns over declining ad revenue growth contributed to many investors being bitten by the FAANGs during the recent bout of market volatility.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

S&P 500 Drops 90 points

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David Blitzer

Former Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee

S&P Dow Jones Indices

Why?

Trade Hopes dashed – It turned out a deal with China wasn’t quite yet a done deal. Politicians should be reminded that markets move much faster than trade negotiations or Congress.

Yield Curve approaching inversion – Five-year drops below two-year, but maybe we should wait for the ten year to drop too.

Rising Interest rates – based on Fed fund futures, the chance that the Fed raises interest rates on December 19th is 80%

Brexit – British Prime Minister May lost a round in Parliament while the European Union might let Britain withdraw its Article 50 request to leave – if the British were to change their minds.

The US Economy – GDP growth is good, unemployment is low but home sales are slowing and business capital spending looks soft.  Will the stock market spoil consumers’ optimism?

VIX above 20 – just about normal. Since the end of 2000, the average is 19.5

While anything, and everything, on this list could explain why the market dropped over 3% today, the main reason was probably that it started to sink and everyone followed along.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

Mid Caps Less Risky Than Large Caps?

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Jodie Gunzberg

Former Managing Director, Head of U.S. Equities

S&P Dow Jones Indices

In November, there was high market volatility in response to at least a few major events including the U.S. midterm elections, Brexit, G20 and Fed Chair Powell’s comments.  The risk (measured by 30-day annualized volatility) on Nov. 30, 2018 for the S&P 500 was 20.6%, which is 3.5 times higher than its risk of 5.9% on Oct. 9, before the Oct. 10th sell-off, and 1.4 times higher than its average risk of 15.2% (using daily data since Jan. 2, 1991, the earliest common date of the S&P 500 and S&P MidCap 400, through Nov. 30, 2018).   While the S&P MidCap 400 risk of 19.1% and S&P SmallCap 600 risk of 21.8% were also elevated ending Nov. 30, 2018, it is interesting to note the large-cap risk was higher than the mid-cap risk.  The last November when this happened occurred in 2007.

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices

November 2007 is clearly an interesting point since it was just following the bull market ending on Oct. 9, 2007.  This does not necessarily mean the market will decline but it may be time to think about mid-caps since now the premium might be available for less risk.  Going back to 1991, when the S&P MidCap 400 was launched, it has delivered on average 3.2% extra of annualized return but at a cost of higher 1.4% annualized risk, based on daily data from Jan. 2, 1991 – Nov. 30, 2018.  It seems attractive to have earned that premium but it is not available consistently.  Note, over many commonly measured periods, mid-caps underperform large-caps.  Though, in November, mid-caps outperformed.

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices

There seem to be moments in mid-caps that are powerful in capturing upside and limiting downside returns of the S&P 500.  Overall, the upside capture ratio is 112 while the downside capture ratio is 97.  This means, on average, for every 1% increase in the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400 gained 1.12%, and also, on average, for every 1% decrease in the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400 lost 0.97%.  Since 1991, when the S&P 500 had a positive month, it rose 3.0% while in those same months, the S&P MidCap 400 rose 3.4%.  During that same time period, when the S&P 500 fell in a month, it lost 3.4% while the S&P MidCap 400 lost 3.3%.  In fact, in 88% of months (295/335), both sizes moved in the same direction, magnifying the gains and losses. When both the S&P 500 and S&P MidCap 400 gained, the large-caps were up 3.3% versus 3.9% for mid-caps.  However, when both lost, the large-caps fell 3.9% versus 4.2% for mid-caps on average.

On an annual basis, there have been moments when strong mid-cap premiums appeared, and have been particularly helpful during difficult times such as the financial crisis, the tech bubble bust and the early 1990’s recession.  The S&P MidCap 400 outperformed the S&P 500 by 38% from 1991-1993, 81% from 2000-2005 and by 24.1% in 2007-2010.  Not only were the premiums big, but in the latter two times, the returns of the S&P 500 were negative 15.0% and 11.3%, respectively, while the S&P MidCap 400 gained 66.0% and 12.8%, respectively.  In years after the November 2007 risk discount of mid-caps to large-caps showed up, the mid-cap premium was prominent.  It was especially great when the November 1999 risk discount persisted from the preceding October. This appears similar to the current risk discount that is in its second consecutive month.

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices. Annualized risk used daily data for the stated year. Returns are annual per year. 2018 ends on Nov. 30, 2018 and the return is not annualized.

This November, the S&P 400 gained 2.9% versus the 1.8% from the S&P 500 and the 1.4% from the S&P SmallCap 600.  In mid-caps, 9 of 11 sectors were positive, while 8 of 11 large-cap sectors gained and 6 of 11 small-cap sectors gained.  Energy in the S&P MidCap 400 was the worst performer, losing 10.2% for the month on the back of a 16.7% loss, making it the worst consecutive 2-month energy sector loss since Dec. 2015 – Jan. 2016.  However, the mid-cap consumer discretionary sector rebounded, posting its biggest monthly spread over consumer staples since Sep. 2017, which could be viewed as optimistic.

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Finally in November, the S&P 500 had its biggest 3-day gain of 4.23% during November 26-28 since the 3 days ending on June 30, 2016, when the index gained 4.91%.  This was largely driven by Powell’s comments and anticipation of improving trade relations from the G20 Summit.  While there have been 3-day gains larger than 4.23% only 1.8% of the time (or 436 out of 23,614 instances) in the whole history of the S&P 500 since 1928, many have happened in trending or turning environments.  In the past 5 years, 3-day gains have only happened after bottoms (or temporary bottoms.)  After the 3-day gain ending December 19, 2014, it was another 216 days until the peak and 249 days before the next bottom.  Subsequently, another rebound happened with a 3-day gain of 6.49% ending on August 28, 2015 with 67 days until the next top and 167 days until the next bottom that happened on February 11, 2016 (the index never dropped below that index level afterwards) followed by another big 3-day rebound of 5.43%, ending on February 17, 2016.

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices.

There are many factors going into December that are bullish for equities, especially mid-caps.  Equities historically perform well on average in December with every size, style and sector gaining. But mid-caps have done best.  If trading tensions ease, helping growth and pushing the dollar down, mid caps may be best positioned to perform best based on historical sensitivity.  Mid-caps gain most from a 1% dollar drop, rising on average 3.2% versus 2.6% for large-caps.  Oftentimes, the falling dollar acts as a catalyst for new international growth and propels returns beyond the mature large-caps.  Lastly, the S&P MIdCap 400 has a total return on average of 4.9% versus the S&P 500 total return on average of 4.0% per 1% of historical GDP growth.

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

Capturing and Evaluating Intentionality in Funds

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Kelly Tang

Former Director

Global Research & Design

One of the most salient themes in this year’s 29th Annual SRI Conference was intentionality. The topic of intentionality has jumped to prominence in ESG discussions—particularly in regard to ESG ratings for mutual funds—and understanding what it means is important for ESG market participants.

In ESG terms, intentionality aims to evaluate whether a given fund or strategy has policies and procedures in place that demonstrate that the investment management process makes a concerted effort to address environmental, social, and governance issues.

Recently, fund analytics and financial information providers began to assign ESG ratings to over 34,000 funds using their proprietary scaling mechanisms and scores. Such methodologies involve a holdings-based scoring system of rolling up individual companies’ ESG ratings into a single mutual fund rating.

The reception to this type of ESG ranking for funds has been mixed, with criticism centering around the fact that the fund’s sustainability score fails to fully capture the ESG intentions of that strategy. In particular, the key concern has been that a holdings-based approach does not take into account the full arsenal of tools available to portfolio managers and investors, such as investor engagement and shareholder proposal voting.

Another criticism directed toward the rolling up method is the lack of consideration for the overarching strategies of the institution (i.e., intentionality) and the limitation in using data-based “snapshots” of funds’ holdings in isolation. For example, the situation may exist whereby a fund has invested in and is working with low ESG score companies in an effort to improve their behavior. Yet in the current scoring system, despite this particular fund’s intention to promote ESG, this fund would register as a low-ranking ESG fund. With this is mind, melding a fund’s intentionality score with the quantitative holdings data would be the preferred method in rating a fund on its ESG performance.

Therefore, the question then becomes: what would be the best way to craft an intentionality score that encompasses a qualitative and quantitative lens for the fund manager? Although there are no easy answers to that question, it has been suggested that an intentionality score should ideally focus on the past actions of the fund and review how managers have voted historically on environmental or broader ESG resolutions at major companies.

Given these concerns about a fund score based on holdings, competitors for mutual fund ESG ratings are introducing methods that are more contextualized and nuanced. For example, some providers rank funds by their initiative on ESG strategy (depth and performance), shareholder engagement, public sphere advocacy, and performance.

It is important to note that these discussions and critiques around the existing methods to evaluate intentionality highlight the transition that ESG is undertaking as it evolves from emerging to mainstream status. The mainstreaming of ESG data into fund rankings is a positive development, as discussions have moved from pinpointing the weaknesses in a company’s ESG data to those at the fund level.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

A Look at Mexican Industries and the Potential Impact of the USMCA

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Maria Sanchez

Director, Sustainability Index Product Management, U.S. Equity Indices

S&P Dow Jones Indices

After more than a year of negotiations, the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement (USMCA) is scheduled to be signed on Nov. 30 2018, at the G20 Summit in Argentina. The deal represents the new trade agreement between the former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries.

Market participants who want to gain more insight into the potential impact of the new agreement on the Mexican economy and capital markets can use the geographic revenue data to estimate the percentage of Mexican equities that derive their revenues domestically, and those that derive their revenues from the U.S. and Canada.

Using the constituents of the S&P/BMV IPC CompMx as of Oct. 31, 2018, we look at the revenue exposure of the constituents based on trailing 12-month figures. We found that the majority of Mexican companies derived their revenue locally (66.72%). Roughly 9.79% of revenues came from the U.S., and the remainder came from Canada or South American countries (see Exhibit 1).

Canada accounted for less than 1% of the revenues. Including Canada, approximately 10.74% of S&P/BMV IPC CompMx companies’ revenue exposure (roughly more than a third of the 32.3% foreign revenue) came from the former NAFTA countries.

Beyond the headline revenue exposure breakdown by country, it is potentially worthwhile to dive deeper into individual industries, as trade agreements tend to affect certain industries more than others.

In Exhibit 2, we present a detailed breakdown of the Mexican industries that have exposure to the U.S. and Canada. The top three industries in descending order based on revenue exposure are Materials (43.4%), Food, Beverage & Tobacco (25.2%), and Telecommunication Services (15.5%).

It is not by coincidence that the automobile industry is a contentious topic in the new trade deal. Of the 10.74% revenue coming from the U.S. and Canada, the Automobiles & Components Industry (GICS Code 2510) is the fifth-largest in terms of weighted revenue exposure. However, based on our analysis, we find it likely that Materials and Food, Beverage & Tobacco are the two industries that would be most affected in Mexico, more so than the headline-grabbing automobile industry.

It remains to be seen who will take the biggest losses and gains in the new USMCA deal, and whether this is a step forward in international trade. At a minimum, using geographic revenue provides a rough picture of Mexican industries that have the potential to be affected.

Revenue exposure[1] gives us an additional tool to have a better understanding of what´s inside the index, characteristic, and risks that are not visible at a first glance.

[1] We used the FactSet Geographic Revenue Exposure (GeoRevTM) dataset to calculate revenue exposure. It provides a geographic breakdown of revenues at the country level for all companies with available data.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.