Many advisors feel that their favorite active manager will guide them through market volatility and limit drawdowns during times of market stress. But is that how things played out at the beginning of 2020? S&P DJI’s Brent Kopp and Berlinda Liu take a closer look at COVID-19’s impact on active vs. passive performance.
The S&P ESG Global Macro Index is designed to capture potential opportunities across market conditions through a rules-based, geographically diverse, dynamic mix of ESG equities and fixed income.
Trend-following strategies have the potential to outperform during periods of crisis, and that is exactly what the S&P Systematic Global Macro Index (S&P SGMI) did during the COVID-19-related drawdowns. Here we will examine this index and attribute its performance YTD. The S&P SGMI is a trend-following strategy that takes long or short positions in 37 Read more […]
There were impressive results for active managers in the Brazil Corporate Bond Funds category, with 93.6% of them beating the benchmark in March 2020 and 88.2% Q1 2020. However, were these performance results due to true skill? This outperformance may be related to a market distortion. On the one hand, Brazil’s corporate bond funds experienced Read more […]
Insurance companies continue to increase their ETF usage to serve a broad range of functions within their general account portfolios. Explore some of the most recent holding and transaction trends with S&P DJI’s Raghu Ramachandran and Kelsey Stokes. Read the full reports to learn more about how insurance companies are using ETFs in their Read more […]
Risk appetite returned in the second quarter of 2020, spurred by the easing of COVID-19 lockdowns and aggressive economic stimulus measures. The S&P 500® rebounded, finishing the quarter up 20.5%, and yields on U.S. Treasuries saw little change. In commodities, the S&P GSCI rallied, with energy posting a sharp gain as oil-producing countries agreed on Read more […]
Investing legend Marty Zweig famously declared, “don’t fight the Fed.” With the Fed now buying fixed income ETFs and fund flows of index-based ETFs surging, Marty’s advice is proving timely. In this blog post, we review key index-based product performance leading up to the Fed’s intervention and detail the ETF fund flows that followed. Back Read more […]
The contentious debate of active versus passive is perpetual. Over the past 15 years, SPIVA® Scorecard results have reflected on the trends of active fund management vis a vis benchmarks, wherein statistics tilt the balance in favor of indexing. This recurring feature of benchmark outperformance is contributing to the adoption and growth of the passive Read more […]
In recent years, one noticeable development in the corporate bond market has been the rapid growth of the BBB bond market in terms of its absolute amount and relative share of investment-grade corporate bonds. We wrote a blog on this topic in May 2019 detailing the growth of the BBB bond market and its impact Read more […]
After a long bull market, the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the financial markets and put the question of how to earn a smooth return stream over a long period of time back on the table. This has given rise to a strengthening of conviction toward environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and risk management. S&P Read more […]