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Anu Ganti

Senior Director, Index Investment Strategy, S&P Dow Jones Indices

Anu R. Ganti is Senior Director, Index Investment Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI). The index investment strategy team provides research and commentary on the entire S&P DJI product set, including U.S. and global equities, thematics, commodities, fixed income and sustainability indices. She is also a frequent contributor to both print and broadcast media outlets.
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May 19, 2023

Disentangling Diversification

We frequently hear that “it’s a stock picker’s market.” The recent market environment could equally well be characterized as a sector picker’s market. To measure the importance of sectors, we decompose total market dispersion into within-sector and cross-sector effects. Exhibit 1 shows that the contribution of cross-sector effects to total S&P 500® dispersion has trended…

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Apr 17, 2023

SPIVA Europe Scorecard 2022: A Challenging Year for Fixed Income, but Not Necessarily for All Fixed Income Managers

For the first time, our SPIVA® Europe Year-End 2022 Scorecard measures the performance of actively managed fixed income funds, covering 11 categories across currencies and credit quality. Fixed income funds had a better record than their equity brethren in 2022, with a majority of funds outperforming in five reported categories over a one-year horizon (compared…

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Mar 20, 2023

SPIVA Canada Scorecard 2022: Country, Currency and Concentration Contexts

Since 2004, our SPIVA® Canada Scorecards have shown that a majority of actively managed Canadian equity funds typically underperform the S&P/TSX Composite Index. However, according to the recently published SPIVA Canada Year-End 2022 Scorecard, the annual underperformance rate dropped to the best result we have seen since 2015: just 52% of Canadian Equity managers lagged…

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Feb 14, 2023

Active Ability versus Active Outperformance

Some commentators have argued that today’s market environment—characterized by rising rates and economic growth concerns—is a ripe environment for stock pickers. This argument is conditionally correct, as long as we remember that having the opportunity to add value does not guarantee that value gets added. In today’s environment, active managers have good potential to add…

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Feb 9, 2023

Why Indexing Can Be Applied to Thematics

Index funds, which hardly existed 50 years ago, now play a prominent role in global financial markets. But passive investing does not dominate in every market segment. Recently, we have seen exponential growth in so-called “thematic” investing, with a proliferation of themes in areas like cybersecurity, robotics and electric vehicles. This more granular space is…

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Jan 17, 2023

Style, Size, and Skewness

Two of the biggest reversals of 2022 compared to 2021 were the outperformance of smaller caps and the outperformance of value compared to growth. Both of these factors helped drive the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index’s recovery last year, as well as a decline in market concentration. As sector and style exposures are not independent,…

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Dec 15, 2022

Safe Harbors and Silver Linings

As we reflect on this year’s notable market themes, one trend is certain: it has been a tumultuous market characterized by rate hikes and inflation concerns across regions, with significant losses across asset classes. Crypto market performance added to jitters, with the S&P Cryptocurrency LargeCap Index down 66% YTD. Losses throughout the year culminated in…

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Nov 10, 2022

Examining Equal Weight

In this tumultuous market characterized by Fed rate hikes, elevated inflation and a strong dollar, mega-cap growth companies have suffered heavy losses, paced by recent “Big Tech” earnings disappointments from Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and others. The S&P 500® Top 50 declined by 19% over the past 12 months, underperforming the S&P 500 by 5%….

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Oct 19, 2022

Size, Sectors and Skew: Observations from the SPIVA MENA Mid-Year 2022 Scorecard

The semiannual S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA®) Scorecards1 measure the performance of actively managed funds against their corresponding benchmarks in various markets around the world. According to the latest SPIVA MENA Mid-Year 2022 Scorecard, the majority of MENA active equity managers outperformed their benchmarks, despite a turbulent second quarter and geopolitical tensions. Performance across the…

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Oct 18, 2022

The Importance of Being Indexed

One of the benefits of indexing is its low cost relative to active management. As indexing has grown, investors have benefited substantially by saving on fees and avoiding active underperformance. We can estimate the fee savings each year by multiplying the difference between the average expense ratios of active and index equity mutual funds by…

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