Can South Korea Steal the Spotlight in Emerging Markets?
After political turmoil pushed it down in 2024,1 South Korea recovered and was the best-performing equity market globally in 2025 (as measured by the S&P Korea BMI), and it has continued to outperform as of August 2026 (up 78.7% YTD versus 14.8% for the S&P Global BMI). The performance of the stock market has fluctuated…
Tracking the African Sovereign Debt Market with the iBoxx LSF USD African Sovereigns Index
Explore the structural forces shaping African sovereign debt markets and how they differ from their LatAm and APAC peers.
Private Credit Is Evolving, How Are Benchmarks Keeping Pace?
Private credit has become one of the fastest-growing asset classes within global capital markets. In the first half of 2026 alone, private credit fundraising reached USD 190 billion, which is on pace to surpass the 2025 full-year total of USD 240 billion (see Exhibit 1).1 Direct lending has driven much of private credit’s growth, having…
Using Benchmarks to Understand and Measure Digital Assets
As digital assets become more institutional, the need for a clear way to define, measure and compare them is becoming more pressing. Without relevant, and credible, benchmarks, fund managers can struggle to explain performance, and allocators their risk, when comparing strategies against the wrong reference point. This is not just a theoretical challenge. It is…
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- Tags benchmarking digital assets, Bitcoin, crypto, Cryptocurrency, digital assets
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- Thematics
The Next Phase of Volatility Control in Indexed Insurance
Volatility-controlled indices (VCIs) have become a cornerstone of indexed insurance product design, helping insurers navigate volatility while maintaining exposure to growth assets. S&P Dow Jones Indices recently published the paper Indexed Insurance: Embracing Volatility-Controlled Indices in Next-Generation Products, in which we explore the growth in popularity of VCIs, their performance across market environments and their…
Digging Deeper: 20 Years of the S&P Metals & Mining Select Industry Index
From artificial intelligence and electrification to infrastructure spending and geopolitical competition for critical minerals, metals and mining companies sit at the center of some of the most important themes of this decade. The S&P Metals & Mining Select Industry Index tracks the performance of the companies that discover, extract and process the materials powering the…
Measuring USD Leveraged Loans for the Brazilian Market
The author would like to thank Sofia Lozada for her contributions to this blog. Introduction: The Challenge Brazilian institutional investors are increasingly looking beyond domestic markets in search of income. With local yields subject to monetary policy cycles and a concentrated domestic credit universe, global fixed income could offer diversification. Instruments with different risk drivers,…
Ballots and Benchmarks: How Elections Shake Markets around the World
Every election season brings a familiar ritual: wall-to-wall media coverage, confident predictions and no shortage of opinions about what a given outcome will mean for markets. But does the noise translate into measurably significant market movement? And if it does, does it matter equally everywhere? To find out, we examined equity index performance around election…
How and Why Institutions Are Evolving Their ETF Usage
What’s driving the continued growth of ETF adoption among institutional investors? Explore the expanded range of ETF applications across portfolio types and objectives. For a deeper dive into the trends and insights highlighted in this video, read the full research report, ETFs in Institutional Portfolios: The New Normal.
Targeting the Drivers of Dividend Strength: A First Look at the S&P 500 Dividend Drivers Index
S&P Dow Jones Indices is pleased to introduce the new S&P 500® Dividend Drivers Index, which offers a holistic approach to identifying dividend-paying companies within the S&P 500. Unlike traditional approaches that emphasize a single metric—such as high yield or dividend growth—the index focuses on the key drivers of dividend strength. It combines historical and…
