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Tag Archives: index performance

May 24, 2023

Persistently Disappointing

If you’ve ever read a prospectus (or, for that matter, an S&P DJI research report), you know that “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” At one level, if you understand that, you understand the most important thing about S&P DJI’s Persistence Scorecards. For the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Canada (with Australia coming…

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Apr 10, 2023

Unwisely Concentrated

Anyone familiar with our SPIVA Scorecards will recognize that most active managers fail most of the time. Anyone familiar with active managers will recognize that they can be quite creative in proposing both excuses and remedies for this historical record. One of their most persistent suggestions, in fact, is that active management simply isn’t active…

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Oct 12, 2022

Making a Virtue of Necessity

When the market declines by nearly 24%, as the S&P 500® did in the first nine months of 2022, investors typically lick their wounds and wonder what comes next. Spoiler alert: I don’t know. But there are ample historical data to explore amidst our befuddlement. First, the bad news: Exhibit 1 shows that there is…

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Sep 29, 2022

Shooting Hoops with Michael Jordan: An Allegory

I am not a particularly good athlete, and perhaps the sport at which I am most inept is basketball. Despite that, let’s assume that I somehow challenge Michael Jordan, arguably the best player in the history of the game, to a free throw shooting contest. What are my chances of success? (Stay with me, I…

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Aug 18, 2022

S&P U.S. Indices Mid-Year 2022: Analyzing Relative Returns to CRSP

The first half of 2022 saw supply chain disruptions, interest rate hikes amid rising inflation and geopolitical tensions sour sentiment, creating a complex environment for equity markets. The S&P 500® was down 20%, which represented the worst start of the year since 1970. What was the impact on other S&P DJI U.S. equity indices and…

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Aug 2, 2022

Time Sensitivity and Volatility Management

We all know that in the long run, the U.S. stock market has performed very well, compounding at well over 10% per year for nearly a century. We also know that sometimes the market performs very poorly, as the S&P 500®’s 20% decline in the first half of 2022 reminds us. For an investor who…

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Jul 11, 2022

Patience Is a Virtue

With the first half of 2022 in the books, commentators have noted that this year’s -20.0% total return for the S&P 500® is the worst January-June result in more than 50 years. Painful as the first six months were, what might they tell us about the rest of the year? History gives us both bad…

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Jun 22, 2022

Combining Dividend Strategies

Throughout this year’s market turmoil, dividend strategies have been among the most reliable sources of relative, if not absolute, performance. Through June 21, 2022, e.g., when the S&P 500® had declined -20.4% YTD, the S&P 500 High Dividend Index (roughly speaking, the 80 highest-yielding stocks in the 500) sustained a loss of only -3.7%. The…

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Jun 7, 2022

Seven Days in May

The performance of S&P 500®-based factor indices in May 2022 was generally favorable. Most factors outperformed the S&P 500, with the league table dominated by value and dividend tilts. The overall results for the month, however, obscure the intra-month dynamics: between the end of April and May 19, the S&P 500 fell by 5.5%, compounding…

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May 9, 2022

Value Resurgent, Part 2

The years between 2017 and 2021 were a frustrating half-decade for value investors. The S&P 500 Growth Index advanced at a compound annual rate of 24.1%, more than double the 11.9% return of its Value counterpart. Despite occasional (and sometimes prematurely celebrated) periods of success, Value underperformed Growth in four years of the five (and…

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