“You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse.” Julius Caesar, Act 3 This morning’s Wall Street Journal declared that “Index Funds Are the New Kings of Wall Street.” The coronation, and similar notes of the “end of an era,” were prompted by Morningstar Read more […]
The attacks on Sept. 14, 2019, on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities have put the oil market back in focus for investors and policy makers alike. The event was reported to have been the largest single supply disruption in the oil market for half a century, crippling half of Saudi oil production and temporarily halting production Read more […]
S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) scorecards provide mainstay performance comparisons between active managers and benchmarks. Our latest Institutional SPIVA scorecard shows once again how difficult active managers found it to beat benchmarks, net- or gross-of-fees. Here are a couple of highlights. 2018 proved challenging for institutional equity managers, although institutional fixed income managers showed some Read more […]
On Friday, Sept. 13, 2019, the annual rebalancing of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) took place. This year marks the 20-year anniversary of the DJSI World, the oldest and most iconic global corporate sustainability benchmark in existence. For the companies that have been selected for this index each year over the last two decades, Read more […]
From Dec. 31, 1999, to June 30, 2019, the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats® generated a total return of 590.3%. Of the contribution, about 57% was from dividend income, while 43% came from price appreciation. In this blog, we will look at the risk/return characteristics in detail. Favorable Risk-Adjusted Returns The S&P High Yield Dividend Read more […]
The S&P U.S. High Yield Low Volatility Corporate Bond Index[1] is designed as a low volatility strategy in the high yield bond universe. The index aims to deliver higher risk-adjusted returns than the underlying broad-based benchmark through mitigating uncompensated credit risk. The back-tested index performance demonstrated the efficacy of the low volatility strategy, with reduced Read more […]
Over the past five years, the S&P GSCI Coffee underperformed the other soft commodities, as can be seen in Exhibit 1. Broad oversupply issues that have been seen in most commodities have been particularly pronounced in the coffee market. In addition to the major coffee-producing countries’ respective economic problems, these countries also generally suffer from Read more […]
Let’s suppose for a moment that you are given a choice between two hypothetical exchange traded funds (ETFs) tracking the same index. Fund A has an annual management fee of 0.4% while Fund B has an annual management fee of 0.1%. At first glance, Fund B seems like the better option: it offers similar performance Read more […]
The S&P 500® is up 21.42% year-to-date and is within striking distance of its all-time high. Although this may suggest the presence of a strong “risk-on” environment, there are signs that the bull market’s stride is changing. Defensive assets have fared relatively well amid concerns over economic growth and trade tensions, while the inversion of Read more […]
After exploring the rationale behind the implementation of a low volatility high dividend strategy in Brazil in our previous blog, we will now examine the recently launched S&P/B3 Low Volatility High Dividend Index. The index is designed to measure the performance of the least volatile stocks among a specified group of high-dividend-yielding constituents from its Read more […]
