Early in 2020, global stock markets acted in concert during the sell-off, bottoming out around the world in late March. However, the extent to which different markets declined, and the strength of the subsequent recovery, differed significantly around the world. With 2020 now in hindsight, S&P DJI’s range of global equity indices tell a tale…
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Investment management is a zero sum game. The source of outperformance for a market’s outperformers is the underperformance of the same market’s underperformers. Properly measured, the weighted average sum of the winners’ gains is exactly equal (before costs) to the weighted average sum of the losers’ losses. This identity, along with the professionalization of the…
The contrasts between the first 10 months of 2020 and the month of November were vivid. Consider: At the end of October, the year-to-date total return of the S&P 500® was barely positive (2.77%), but was well ahead of the returns of the S&P MidCap 400® (-6.63%) and the S&P SmallCap 600® (-13.06%). In November,…
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…
We recently issued our mid-year SPIVA® reports for the U.S., Australia, and Europe, and other regions will follow in due course. Although one can sometimes find exceptions in the short run, the long-term results of SPIVA can be easily summarized: The majority of active managers underperform most of the time. Historical success does not predict…
The market has recovered most of the losses from March’s uproar, with the S&P/TSX Composite Index down 4.8% in 2020 through Sept. 17. Volatility, though off its March peak, continues to be high but has been evenly distributed across all sectors of the market. Since all sectors experienced similar increases in volatility, it’s not surprising…
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…
Since its debut in April 2000, the S&P/ASX Index Series has served as the de facto measure of value and performance for the Australian stock market, becoming an integral part of the country’s market infrastructure. 2020 has tested the resilience of that infrastructure; as pandemic fears gripped financial markets, stocks ricocheted, and trading in index-linked…
Let’s suppose for a moment that you are given a choice between two hypothetical exchange traded funds (ETFs) tracking the same index. Fund A has an annual management fee of 0.4% while Fund B has an annual management fee of 0.1%. At first glance, Fund B seems like the better option: it offers similar performance…
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…
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