Information Technology was the top-performing sector in 2020, up 44%, while Momentum (up 28%) was the second best-performing factor. These two results are reminiscent of the bubble we experienced two decades ago. But the Tech sector of today is not your father’s Tech sector. Similarly, we can analyze the market from a factor perspective and…
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2020 was a year of two reversals for the market. First, equities recovered from the depths of March to finish the year strongly, and second, smaller-cap and value stocks staged a roaring comeback in the final quarter. We can better understand the second reversal by analyzing the market’s distribution of returns and the performance of…
When we think about reversals in the market, we likely think of brief turnarounds in performance. But what if it’s more? What makes a reversal turn into a recovery is a full-fledged long-term improvement in performance. We can apply this logic to Equal Weight’s recent experience. After consistent underperformance since April 2017, the S&P 500®…
The S&P 500® rose by 10% in the 12 months ending on Oct. 31, 2020, trouncing the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index by 9.1%, as seen in Exhibit 1. While such outperformance is not unprecedented, it does remind us of previous market peaks (especially in December 1999), and raises questions about whether a reversal may…
How can the relationship between sectors and factors help investors identify market regime changes and inform allocations? S&P DJI’s Anu Ganti and Hamish Preston take a closer look at market trends through the lens of S&P Composite 1500® data. Learn more: https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/research/article/the-sp-composite-1500-an-efficient-measure-of-the-us-equity-market/
As of the end of August 2020, the S&P 500® Information Technology sector had risen a remarkable 36% YTD. Such outstanding relative performance of course reminds us of the late 1990s, when the markets experienced a technology bubble and subsequent bust. One notable resemblance to the late 1990s is Information Technology’s weight in the S&P…
In politics, “regime change” denotes the replacement of one governmental structure with another; in economics, we use the same term to indicate a shift in the interactions of various parts of the economic or financial system. Political regime changes are easy to identify (after all, a military coup is hard to miss). Defining when an…
Volatility, dispersion, and correlation are elements of what we’ve elsewhere characterized as The Active Manager’s Conundrum. Active managers should prefer: Low volatility, which is typically associated with higher returns High dispersion, which means a larger payoff for correct stock selections High correlation, which reduces the opportunity cost of a concentrated portfolio The conundrum arises because…
Why are the market environments most conducive to generating positive absolute returns the least conducive to producing positive relative returns? Explore the active manager’s conundrum with S&P DJI’s Craig Lazzara and Anu Ganti.
The evolution of indexing is one of the most noteworthy trends in modern financial history. The rise of passive investing is the consequence of shortfalls in active performance, as regular readers of our SPIVA reports will recognize. Our recent annual Survey of Indexed Assets shows a surge in S&P 500 indexed assets to $4.6 trillion…
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