Mea culpa: Roughly a month ago I used a dispersion-correlation map to describe how index dynamics can illuminate market movements. In particular, I reported that since high dispersion seems to be a necessary condition for a bear market, and S&P 500 dispersion levels at the end of February were far below those prevailing in past Read more […]
In partnership with the ASX, we recently introduced the S&P/ASX All Technology Index, which, for the first time, brings together ASX-listed companies across a range of industries whose businesses are primarily technology focused. In a market heavily concentrated in banks and natural resource companies, the S&P/ASX All Technology Index provides access to a unique, underrepresented Read more […]
Since its inception, the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index has outperformed the S&P 500 by 1.4% annually. Year-over-year performance margins, however, are anything but steady. Exhibit 1 shows that the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index and its cap-weight counterpart have gone through many performance cycles over the past 30 years. Mega caps experienced record performance Read more […]
When it comes to measuring the performance of U.S. equity market, some broad market indices have more constituents than others. But having a larger number of constituents does not necessarily lead to significantly wider market capitalization coverage. That’s because broad equity benchmarks are usually market-capitalization weighted, with the majority of the index weight concentrated in Read more […]
As we enter the 2020s with interest in worldwide geopolitical volatility, here are some key points about volatility and the performance of options-related indexes the 2010s. How Did Equity Volatility in the 2010s Compare to Volatility in Previous Decades? The average of the daily closing values of the VIX® Index in the 2010s was 16.9 Read more […]
From a political and economic standpoint, 2019 was a challenging and interesting year for the Latin American region, but the region still finished strong. The S&P Latin America 40, Latin America’s blue-chip index, ended Q4 with a return of 9.0%, and it was up 13.9% for the year. Small-cap stocks in the region fared well, Read more […]
As we enter the 2020s, here are some key points about the 2010s – The U.S. economy has expanded for a record 126 straight months, the longest time period in U.S. history, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The bull market in U.S. stocks has run about 10.7 years, one of the longest Read more […]
The debate between active management and passive management has being ongoing for several years. Active managers make investment decisions in an effort to outperform their benchmark, while passive managers simply track an index to gain exposure to a market or segment of a market. Active managers claim to have enough skills to consistently outperform the Read more […]
At the General Election on Thursday, U.K. voters handed a resounding victory to Boris Johnson’s Conservative party. The British electorate awarded the party with 365 out of 650 seats, the largest outright majority of any U.K. government since 2001, and the biggest victory for the Conservative party since Margaret Thatcher’s final victory in 1987. Exhibit Read more […]
While many investors appear to believe that winners persist over time, the most recent S&P Persistence Scorecard underscores the well-known disclaimer that “past performance is no guarantee of future results”: irrespective of asset class or style focus, few fund managers consistently outperformed their peers. Some market participants believe that active managers with successful track records Read more […]
