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Commodities Marched Downward during Month of Volatility

Pandemic Affects Canadian Sectors Differently: Evidence from the Information Technology Sector

Have Inverse Indices Been Able to Provide the Hedge You Expected?

Distressed in Distressing Times

Playing Defense with Profitability Screening in Australian Small Caps

Commodities Marched Downward during Month of Volatility

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Fiona Boal

Managing Director, Global Head of Equities

S&P Dow Jones Indices

It is difficult to accurately express the magnitude of the health, societal, and economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the lens of the commodities markets, the economic impact has been swift and severe. The broad-based S&P GSCI ended March down an extraordinary 29.4%, the largest monthly drop in performance in the index’s nearly 29-year history. While it remains valuable to review past performance during times of such extremes, it is also imperative that market participants identify the longer-term trends that may emerge in the wake of this devastating economic shock. In this sense, commodities markets can offer valuable insight into real-time economic impacts and, as such, may be the first to offer confirmation of conditions in the real economy.

The energy sector was decimated in March, with the S&P GSCI Petroleum down a staggering 49.6%. The market has faced an unprecedented, simultaneous demand and supply shock. The next step for the energy complex is to achieve some level of price stability and for the difficult process of restructuring to commence, but at this point, it is almost impossible to predict how long it will take for the current oil surplus to be eliminated. The only light on the horizon is the fact that at some point, lower energy prices should act as a mechanism to stimulate demand, especially consumer demand in countries such as the U.S.

Metals prices outperformed energy but did not escape the high volatility and general risk-off sentiment across all asset classes in March. Bellwethers for economic growth, metals experienced broad weakness as the cuts to GDP forecasts cascaded through the financial ecosystem. The S&P GSCI Industrial Metals fell 10.2% for the month. However, outside of the traditional industrial metals, one commodity performed admirably. The S&P GSCI Iron Ore continued to outperform, down only 0.2% for the month, benefiting from China restarting some of its manufacturing capacity. The dislocation between individual asset price performance even within the same broad asset class or sector will likely persist as the scale, geographic scope, and impact of the pandemic ebb and flow.

The S&P GSCI Gold continued to outperform in March, highlighting its safe-haven status, but it likely did not outperform to the extent that many market participants would have expected. The level of liquidity in the gold market made it an attractive asset to liquidate in order to access cash during the market turmoil. In addition, gold had already enjoyed a surge in investor interest prior to the current crisis on the back of low to negative interest rates across the globe, geopolitical flare-ups, and a global rush for assets that retain their value. Even when conditions for an asset remain favorable, asset prices do not necessarily react positively.

A variation on the so-called breakfast trade—long wheat, coffee, and orange juice—was the highlight of the agriculture market in March. The S&P GSCI Orange Juice rallied 25.3%, the S&P GSCI Wheat returned 8.4%, and the S&P GSCI Coffee was up 7.4% over the month, as demand for consumer staples surged and top suppliers mulled export restrictions to protect domestic supplies. The longer and more severe the global pandemic, the more likely global food supply chains become stressed and the more likely agricultural commodity prices dislocate from the broader commodity complex.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that, while the focus of market participants since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has rightly been on the scale and longevity of demand destruction, supply disruptions will increasingly be a factor in price discovery. Companies involved in the production of commodities are undoubtedly cutting production as a function of government-enforced shutdowns and in response to collapsing prices. As levels of economic activity start to pick back up, supply should play an increasingly important role in the price discovery process for commodities.

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

Pandemic Affects Canadian Sectors Differently: Evidence from the Information Technology Sector

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Michael Orzano

Head of Global Exchanges Product Management

S&P Dow Jones Indices

The S&P/TSX Capped Information Technology Index gained a whopping 62% in 2019, topping all other Canadian equity sectors and beating the broad market S&P/TSX Composite by about 40%. Given the traditionally cyclical nature of the Information Technology sector and its outsized gains during the bull market, the sector might be expected to lag during the COVID-19 downturn.

However, Information Technology continued to outperform YTD through March 26, surpassing the traditionally defensive Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Communication Services sectors. In addition, it experienced the second-lowest volatility during the crisis period out of the 11 S&P/TSX Capped Sector Indices.

So, why has Information Technology been so resilient despite a steep market downturn and growing expectations that there will be a historically deep recession? For one, this pandemic-driven economic shutdown will clearly affect industries differently compared with what has played out in past recessions. With consumers and businesses forced to remain home in isolation, many technology-related companies are likely to see increased demand for their services. We are seeing this play out in the U.S. and many other markets, as stock prices of companies in many technology-related areas including e-commerce, software, semiconductors, communications equipment, and others have fared well due to expectations that the world will rely heavily upon these products and services during the pandemic and in the ensuing recovery.

In addition, as most keen Canadian market observers are aware, Shopify, a leading provider of e-commerce software solutions to businesses, is the largest Canadian Information Technology company and has performed well in the recent environment. As Exhibit 3 illustrates, the strength of Shopify has been the largest single driver of S&P/TSX Capped Information Technology Index performance in 2020. However, other large constituents such as Constellation Software, Open Text Corporation, and Kinaxis contributed to the sector outperformance as well.

It’s important to recall that the recent relative outperformance of the Information Technology sector is an extension of a longer-term trend. In fact, despite recent declines, the S&P/TSX Capped Information Technology Index remains up 22% over the trailing 12 months, outperforming the S&P/TSX Composite by 37% and easily beating all other sectors.

While the Canadian equity market has fallen sharply during the COVID-19 crisis, there has been wide divergence across equity sectors. Given the sharp decline in oil prices, Energy companies have taken the steepest hit, while Health Care has fallen sharply due to the sector’s unusually large exposure to the cannabis industry. Unsurprisingly, defensive sectors such as Utilities, Consumer Staples, and Communication Services have fared relatively well, along with Information Technology, which has thus far proven to be an unlikely beneficiary from this unique downturn.

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

Have Inverse Indices Been Able to Provide the Hedge You Expected?

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Tianyin Cheng

Former Senior Director, ESG Indices

S&P Dow Jones Indices

Since March 9, 2020, we have seen equities and bonds fall together. As bonds fail to provide the diversification benefit in the short term, some investors may choose to use inverse exchange-traded funds as short-term trading tools for an explicit hedge.

Inverse strategies typically aim to replicate the daily performance of their underlying indices with a constant multiplicative factor (such as -1, -2, or -3). While the daily rebalancing allows the products to seek to invert the return of their underlying indices on a daily basis, returns for longer periods are a product of the compounded daily inverse returns during the period, and they could deviate significantly from the stated daily objective. Therefore, although such products offer short-term trading tools for explicit purposes, they may not be suitable as long-term holdings for some investors.

Exhibits 1 and 2 illustrate how inverse daily indices performed in two recent time periods: a period of seven trading days from Feb. 20, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2020, and another period of seven trading days from March 10, 2020, to March 18, 2020. In both periods, the S&P 500® (TR) dropped close to 13%, while the inverse daily indices’ returns were vastly different.

From Feb. 20, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2020, the S&P 500 was trending down every single trading day. In this case, or when the market was trending in one direction in general, the cumulative performance of the inverse daily indices tended to exceed the invert return of the index during the period.

However, from March 10, 2020, to March 18, 2020, the S&P 500 was trending further downward with huge daily swings (from -12% to 5%). In this case, the pursuit of daily investment targets typically had a negative impact on performance for periods longer than one day. The negative impact could have been larger for inverse indices with higher multiples.

This effect of compounding on the cumulative returns may not be trivial for many retail investors. The S&P Leverage and Inverse Indices aim to provide transparent benchmarks for leverage and inverse products.

Further details on the S&P Leverage and Inverse Indices are available here: TalkingPoints: S&P Leverage and Inverse Indices. Additionally, the recent performance of key indices is displayed in Exhibit 3 (from Feb. 19, 2020, to March 31, 2020).

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

Distressed in Distressing Times

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Kevin Horan

Former Director, Fixed Income Indices

S&P Dow Jones Indices

Jeff Gundlach has been recently quoted as asking, “the Fed can buy up corporate bond ETFs and thereby prop up prices of corporate bonds, but what happens when there are defaults and the artificial Fed price is replaced by the recovery value?”

We have already seen how the S&P U.S. Corporate Investment Grade Corporate Bond Index, an index of 7,000+ bonds whose constituents’ option-adjusted spread (OAS) topped out at 568 at the beginning of March 2020, now contains 99 bonds with an OAS greater than 1,000. Though not all are Energy sector bonds, 51 of the 99 are as the virus and the currently low price of oil take their toll on the economy and energy industry.1

Moving down the credit scale and looking at more speculative-grade securities, the effects are even greater. Year to date, the S&P U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Index has seen a fair amount of spread widening, as seen in Exhibit 1. In addition to the movement in OAS spreads, the amount of debt per sector that is at or above an OAS of 1,000 (distressed) has also increased since the beginning of the year. Distressed bonds will be an early indicator of issuers that may end up in default.

The S&P U.S. High Yield Corporate Distressed Bond Index is a sub-index of the S&P U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Index, which focuses on bonds whose OAS are 1,000 or greater. The negative effects of the current market can be seen in its performance as the index is down more than twice as much as its parent index on both a month-to-date and year-to-date basis.

The S&P U.S. High Yield Corporate Distressed Bond Index, when measured on a market-weighted basis, accounts for 3.8% of its benchmark index, though since its first value date on Jan. 31, 2000, it has averaged 9.6% and was as high as 77% on Dec. 31, 2008.

As can be seen in Exhibit 4, the index is going to jump from its current 229 bonds to 963 bonds at the March 31, 2020, rebalancing. This will be the largest number of bonds entering the index at a rebalancing since the Oct. 31, 2008, rebalancing. The percent of distress within high yield will be 30% of market value, or 963 bonds out of the high yield April universe of 2,314 (42%).

As the market scenario plays out after the sudden stop of economic activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, distressed and defaulted debt will likely continue to be an ongoing concern.

Exhibit 5 breaks down the influx of bonds by industry.

The S&P U.S. High Yield Corporate Distressed Bond Index gives a window into credits that are struggling and the issuers that may eventually end up in default.

S&P Global Ratings said the default rate for high-yield, or junk, bonds is heading to 10% over the next 12 months, more than triple the rate of 3.1% that closed out 2019. 

“The current recession in the U.S. this year is coming at a time when the speculative-grade market is historically vulnerable to a liquidity freeze or an earnings drop,” Nick Kraemer, head of S&P Global Ratings Performance Analytics, said in a statement.

 

[1] Some Sectors Are Slippery Slopes as Markets Head Downhill

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

Playing Defense with Profitability Screening in Australian Small Caps

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Akash Jain

Director, Global Research & Design

S&P BSE Indices

In our research paper titled, Profitability Screening in Australian Small Caps, we examined the effectiveness of a profitability screen on improving return as well as reducing volatility and drawdown for Australian small-cap stocks. Adhering to these principles, the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index was launched on Dec. 21, 2018, to track profitable small-cap companies in Australia while minimizing index portfolio turnover and tracking error against the benchmark S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries.

As highlighted in the research paper, the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index tended to outperform the benchmark during down and neutral markets (see Exhibit 1). The defensive characteristic of the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index was also seen in the recent market downturn. During the period from Dec. 31, 2019, to March 20, 2020, the underlying index fell 30.5%, whereas the select strategy fell by 29.5%, outperforming the benchmark by 100 bps. The outperformance of the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index was largely driven by stock selection within sectors (see Exhibit 2). Stock selection in the majority of the sectors attributed positively to the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index’s relative performance, where attribution from Health Care and Consumer Discretionary stocks were most pronounced. Nevertheless, the unintended sector bets had marginal negative attribution to the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index’s return. The select version of the index carried the highest active sector exposures to Real Estate and Consumer Discretionary, while it was most underweight in Materials and Health Care. The overweight in the Consumer Discretionary sector hurt the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index’s performance, but the active sector bets in Consumer Staples and Energy attributed most positively to its return.

In the research paper, we also mentioned the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index had a higher profitability active factor exposure than the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Index historically. In addition, the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index offered higher dividend yields compared with the benchmark, as profitable companies are better positioned to maintain sustainable dividends. Exhibit 3 shows the active factor exposures averaged over the 17-year period since 2002 to 2019. Stock selection based on trailing EPS effectively captured positive profitability exposure for the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index every year. As market conditions changed, so did the profitability active factor exposure. We observed in years when the profitability factor exposure was higher, the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Select Index tended to have better outperformance, indicating profitability was a determinant factor in driving outperformance of the select index (see Exhibit 4).

1 d’Assier, Olivier. “When Size Matters.” Axioma. Pp 12.

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