Human capital, physical capital, and technology have been widely recognized as a fundamental source of economic growth.[1] Dating back to the 1960s and early 1970s, when we saw a rapid increase in educated workers, facilities, and technological catch-up, Japan’s “economic miracle” emerged along with impressive GDP and per capita output growth.[2] Nowadays, these factors are Read more […]
While some dividend-paying companies give out occasional and unsustainable dividends, dividend-growing companies—such as household names like Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobile, and AT&T in the U.S.—provide steadily increasing dividend payouts every year. These long-standing dividend growers are called “Dividend Aristocrats,” and there are two reasons for it. First, with successful business operations and disciplined financial management, they Read more […]
One of the key objectives for the recently launched S&P/JPX Carbon Efficient Index is to motivate companies within the baseline index, TOPIX, to increase their level of environmental disclosure. By incorporating a mechanism to adjust constituent weights by their respective environmental data, the S&P/JPX Carbon Efficient Index has been designed to incentivize all companies, regardless Read more […]
This blog post was co-authored with Dr Richard Mattison, Chief Executive Officer, Trucost, part of S&P Global On Sept. 25, 2018, Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF)—the world’s largest pension fund—announced its selection of two new low-carbon indices, the S&P/JPX Carbon Efficient Index and the S&P Global Ex-Japan LargeMid Carbon Efficient Index, with an allocation 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 […]
S&P Dow Jones Indices recently launched the S&P Japan 500 Equal Weight Index, an equal-weight version of the S&P Japan 500. Over the 15-year period ending in February 2018, encompassing the latter part of Japan’s so-called “lost decades” of stagnant equity returns, the equal-weight index would have outperformed the cap-weighted Japanese equity benchmark by a stonking Read more […]
Sustainable investing has become particularly popular in Europe, across many countries. In the Asia Pacific region, certain countries such as Japan and Australia have shown stronger interest in ESG thanks to asset owner demand, availability of ESG data, and regulatory pressures. In the last couple of years, we have seen some of Japan’s largest institutional Read more […]
Japan’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a 26% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from 2013 levels.1 To achieve this, the Japanese government has set carbon targets for all sectors backed up by a national carbon tax and Tokyo emissions trading scheme. In the first Read more […]
The S&P GIVI (Global Intrinsic Value Index) Japan posted an impressive five-year live track record. It is one of the few multi-factor indices in the market, and it was launched five years ago. Since its launch in March 2012, the S&P GIVI Japan has outperformed its benchmark, the S&P Japan BMI, by 1.17% per year, Read more […]
The spread between the returns of the S&P GIVI Japan and its benchmark index, the S&P Japan BMI, comes from three sources: the excess return of the S&P Low Beta Japan Index; the excess return of the S&P Intrinsic Value Weighted Japan Index; and a residual effect that comes from the sequential approach to the Read more […]