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Philip Murphy

Former Managing Director, Global Head of Index Governance, S&P Dow Jones Indices

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Apr 30, 2019

How Is Your Undefined Benefit Plan Going?

I have probably been receiving them for years, but lately I have noticed opposing position papers in my inbox. Some claim Americans need a revival of defined benefit (DB) plans because of a looming retirement crisis, while others contend that defined contribution (DC) plans are doing great and there is no cause for alarm. DC…

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Jan 22, 2019

2018 Retirement Funding Update for DC Account Holders

2018 produced negative absolute returns across a number of asset classes, particularly international stocks. A broad benchmark of stocks traded outside of the U.S., the S&P Global ex-U.S. BMI (US Dollar) Gross Total Return Index, lost 14.18% of its value. Nevertheless, many investments kept pace with the change in cost of securing future retirement income,…

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Nov 21, 2018

The Case for Emerging Market Stocks

Despite looming threats to global trade, emerging market stocks are a staple of diversified equity portfolios. Emerging countries are a diverse group, accounting for about 28.8% of real world GDP (measured in 2005 U.S. dollars) as of Nov. 12, 2018, according to FactSet. The comparable figure for U.S. production is 25.4%. Year-over-year growth in real…

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Oct 17, 2018

Cost of Retirement Income Q3 2018 Update

Real U.S. interest rates have shifted upward YTD in 2018, with a larger shift on the short end than the long̬̬—producing a flatter curve. Exhibit 1 shows the real yield curve (from 5 to 30 years) at the end of each quarter since December 2017 and also includes data as of Oct. 9, 2018 to…

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Oct 2, 2018

Developing Expectations for Long-Term U.S. Stock Returns

In this bull market, by some measures the longest running in U.S. history, investors may wonder what its prospects for continuation are. Judging by rolling quarterly 10-year annualized returns, the S&P 500® does not necessarily seem over-extended. As Exhibit 1 shows, since the end of World War II, large retracements followed lengthy periods of greater-than-10%…

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Aug 30, 2018

Relative Performance Impacts From the Introduction of Communication Services

S&P Dow Jones Indices will reshuffle stocks in September to reflect the revised structure of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®) in its indices. The move will see telecommunication services replaced by a new sector called communication services. Its constituents will transfer from telecommunication, information technology (IT), and consumer discretionary. Exhibit 1 shows affected S&P…

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Jul 27, 2018

Trading in Facebook Shows Indexing Has Little to Do With Valuation-Based Dislocations

By the close of trading on Thursday, July 26, 2018, shares in Facebook (FB) traded down almost $99 billion, or 19% of their market value. Despite FB’s beginning weight of 2.16%, the S&P 500® was almost flat, losing 0.30% on the day. I suspect you will not hear much about this from those who attempt…

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Jun 19, 2018

Monitoring Progress Toward an Income Goal

In a previous blog post, I described some benefits of having an income goal and a method of estimating one’s retirement income liability. I reviewed a hypothetical example to illustrate steps 1-2 from the list of benefits below, and I calculated a net estimated retirement liability (the portion of retirement income one must fund with…

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Jun 4, 2018

The Benefits of Having a Retirement Income Goal and How to Estimate It

Individuals preparing for life after full-time employment may find that planning for a particular range of inflation-adjusted retirement income is more effective than planning for a particular range of wealth. Wealth levels are unintuitive because they do not provide practical spending guidelines. They are also heavily influenced by random variables (market returns). Using one’s wealth…

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Apr 30, 2018

Do Dividends Really Pay? (Part 2)

Previously I discussed why preference for dividend-paying stocks may not have a strong theoretical footing, but could be grounded in behavioral and practical reasons. Furthermore, due to possible economic signaling generated by dividends, such strategies may be correlated with widely accepted factors like quality and value. This post demonstrates how specific dividend strategy indices may…

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