Even eagle-eyed commodities investors might be surprised to learn that lean hogs have been one of the best-performing individual commodities so far in 2019. As of April 5, 2019, the S&P GSCI Lean Hogs was up an impressive 19.5% since the beginning of the year, outperforming the broad S&P GSCI (up 18.4%), and up 46% Read more […]
In case you missed our country classification announcement on Dec. 5, 2018, we will be starting the process of adding China A-shares to S&P DJI global benchmarks (including the S&P China BMI and S&P Emerging BMI) in September 2019 at a partial inclusion factor of 25%. Given the size of China’s onshore equity market, the Read more […]
Since the sector shakeup on Sep. 24, 2018, the S&P 500 fell 19.5% through the close of Dec. 24, 2018 then rebounded 12.2% by the close of Jan. 23, 2019 for a loss of 9.6% in the full period. The annualized volatility of 22.8% in the past 82 days has been the highest since the 82 Read more […]
China’s onshore bond market, the third-largest debt market in the world and trailing only behind the U.S. and Japan, is an important market for international investors, given that China is the second-largest economy in the world. However, historically foreign ownership of Chinese bonds in the domestic market has been negligible, largely due to a lack Read more […]
On Nov. 26, 2018, S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) launched the S&P GSCI Iron Ore and the S&P GSCI Industrial Metals & Iron Ore Equal Weight to provide investors exposure to one of the most important industrial commodities in the world. Iron ore is the second-largest commodity market by value after crude oil and Read more […]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released its World Economic Outlook, October 2018, with estimated global trade tension scenario impacts on GDP. Overall, the IMF states that recent tariffs will hurt GDP and that additional tariffs will weaken it further. In the long term, according to the IMF’s scenario analysis (on p. 21,) the U.S. GDP Read more […]
Small caps are outperforming large caps significantly in 2018, mainly from the tax cuts, growth, strong dollar and concern about international trade. This has driven the S&P 600 (TR) 8.4% higher than the S&P 500 (TR) (year-to-date through Aug.31, 2018,) measuring the 5th biggest small cap premium in history since 1995, and is the biggest Read more […]
China resumed CNY fixing “counter-cyclical” adjustment factor The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced on August 24 that China’s CNY fixing reporting banks have resumed the counter-cyclical adjustment (CCA) factor in the CNY official midpoint this month. This is the second move of Chinese authorities after the adoption of a 20% reserve requirement of FX Read more […]
On July 23, 2018, China’s state council executive meeting hosted by Premier Li Keqiang announced that fiscal and monetary policy will be further fine-tuned to boost domestic demand. The meeting reiterated that China will strike a balance between “easing and tightening” and keep liquidity “reasonable and sufficient.” It was also stressed that China will not Read more […]
“Not enough progress has been made in closing the gender gap, and in fact, in some countries, you have seen gender inequality increasing…” – Ángel Gurría, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This was the opening of a recent speech at #WomenRule by Politico on a paper newly published by S&P Read more […]
