Dec 4, 2020

Biden 1, Climate Change 1.5

“Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it.” –Joe Biden, Nov. 4, 2020. 1 In a crowded field for “standout tweets from a U.S. president or president-elect,” for those of us who have dedicated careers to tackling sustainability challenges, this may be…

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  • ESG
Dec 2, 2020

A European Perspective on the U.S. Mid-Cap Sweet Spot

Should European investors be looking beyond large-cap U.S. equities for core exposure? S&P DJI’s Tim Edwards and State Street Global Advisors’ Rebecca Chesworth explore the case for U.S. mid-caps through broad and tactical sector exposures.  

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Dec 1, 2020

The Dangers of Extrapolation

The contrasts between the first 10 months of 2020 and the month of November were vivid. Consider: At the end of October, the year-to-date total return of the S&P 500® was barely positive (2.77%), but was well ahead of the returns of the S&P MidCap 400® (-6.63%) and the S&P SmallCap 600® (-13.06%). In November,…

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Dec 1, 2020

Industrial Commodities Benefit from Hopeful COVID-19 Vaccine News

November proved to be a good month for risk assets, including commodities. The headline S&P GSCI rose 12.0%, outperforming the S&P 500®, which gained 10.8%. Promising developments on the COVID-19 vaccine front and the U.S. election outcome rewarded risk assets such as energy and industrial metals, while safe-haven assets like gold lost some luster. The…

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Nov 30, 2020

Moonshots: Catching Lightning in a Bottle?

We introduced the S&P Kensho Moonshots Index (the Moonshots index) and its constituent next-generation innovators in our previous blog. An express intent of the index is to identify innovative companies early in their gestation, when the opportunities for rapid growth may be higher. In this blog, we examine how effective the index is at capturing…

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Nov 30, 2020

How Is the ESG Discussion Changing for Advisors?

In a recent webinar I moderated, Brie Williams of State Street Global Advisors joined me to discuss how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data and investing are now at an important turning point. We ran out of time to answer all the questions we received, and this post follows “Why Now for ESG?” and answers…

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  • ESG
Nov 26, 2020

Using Index Data to Inform Investment Strategies

S&P DJI’s Tim Edwards explores how financial advisors can use index data, human behavior, and SPIVA® results to inform allocations and better understand assumptions about active fund performance.

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Nov 23, 2020

Is South Korea Crowding Your Emerging Markets Allocation?

Key to evaluating core international equity benchmarks is an understanding of the country exposures offered. Developed and emerging market country classification differences between index providers may lead to notable geographic exposure differences across market segments. One of the most meaningful instances of this involves South Korea, which S&P DJI has classified as a developed market…

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Nov 23, 2020

Why Now for ESG?

In a recent webinar I moderated, Brie Williams of State Street Global Advisors joined me to discuss how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data and investing are now at an important turning point. During that webinar, we answered some advisor questions. I encourage you to watch this replay if you missed it. We ran out…

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  • Categories
  • ESG
Nov 20, 2020

The Market Is Up, But So Is Volatility

So far, 2020 has brought us a global pandemic, a coordinated global economic shutdown, and, in the U.S., a notably contentious election. So it’s no surprise that volatility has been, and remains, elevated. Despite all this, equities have fared reasonably (some would say surprisingly) well, with the S&P 500® climbing 13% through Nov. 19 since…

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