In general, it is a positive sign when a company buy back shares. This means the company believes its stock is undervalued and is confident about its future earnings. In recent years, buybacks have become increasingly popular. With a record number of companies buying back shares, how are these companies are faring? A company can Read more […]
In this blog, the third in our introduction to Growth at a Reasonable Price (GARP) strategies, we look at risk and return. The main objective of the S&P 500® GARP Index is to capture the performance of growth stocks with relatively high quality and value composite scores over a long-term investment horizon. Historically, the GARP Read more […]
Fluctuating periods of “risk-on” and “risk-off” mean that spikes in equity market volatility and large drawdowns are increasingly common in today’s economy. Exhibit 1 shows events throughout the current market cycle causing notable rises in volatility and large drawdowns. With more of these likely in the future, as our long bull market cycle ages, how Read more […]
The December 2018 rebalance of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats added four new companies, with the changes effective at the open of Feb. 1, 2019. The new firms are Caterpillar Inc., Chubb Limited, People’s United Financial Inc., and United Technologies Corp. These four companies have the distinguishing characteristics that allow them to be eligible for Read more […]
February has been a great month for factor index performance: of the 17 S&P 500®-based factor indices reported in our quarterly factor dashboard, 11 have outperformed the “vanilla” S&P 500 so far. Our indices focused on quality and shareholder return are having particularly strong months, with the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats®, the S&P 500 Buyback Read more […]
The start of 2019 marks not only the 10th anniversary of S&P Dow Jones Indices in Dubai, but also the expansion of our single- and multi-factor index series into the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Our current suite of single factor indices, including those covering low volatility, momentum, enhanced value, and quality factors, are now Read more […]
Style, the name for the value (growth) factor, is one of the oldest known investment factors. It can be defined in different ways, but in the S&P Composite 1500 that includes the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600, style is measured by growth and value along two separate dimensions, with three factors used to Read more […]
As of Dec. 31, 2018, the passive implementation of dividend strategies measured approximately USD 141 billion based on assets under management (AUM) of dividend-focused ETFs listed in the U.S. This is a staggering amount considering that only 10 years ago the AUM amounted to just over USD 6 billion.[1] The growth in assets, as well Read more […]
The past two months saw bouts of market volatility, which in turn is causing market participants to refocus on defensive equity strategies. Quality, together with other defensive factors such as low volatility, has a higher degree of downside protection compared with other risk factors like value or momentum. For example, during months in which the Read more […]
Factor investing is growing rapidly — not only are more investors adopting factor strategies, but as investors gain experience, they increase their use of them. This is one of the key findings from our recent Global Factor Investing Study, which is based on face-to-face interviews and discussions with more than 300 institutional and wholesale factor Read more […]
