With the S&P/TSX Composite Index up 16% YTD through June 17, 2021, the Canadian equity market seems to have put the pandemic in the rearview mirror. In this environment, predictably, the S&P/TSX Composite Low Volatility Index underperformed, up 11% over the same period. One-year volatility levels (no longer capturing the uncontrolled panic at the onset…
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After the dominant performance of large-cap technology stocks in 2020, concentration concerns naturally come to mind. The HHI, or Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, is a widely-used concentration measure; it’s defined as the sum of the squared index constituents’ percentage weights (usually taken as whole numbers). For example, the HHI for an equally-weighted 50 stock portfolio is 200…
The shock that the onset of the pandemic sent through the financial markets a year ago is mostly a distant memory. The S&P/TSX Composite Low Volatility Index was up 34% for the one-year period ending March 19, 2021, lagging its benchmark index. This is not surprising given that the performance of the S&P/TSX Composite Index…
The S&P 500® was launched on March 4, 1957, and so yesterday marked its 64th birthday. To celebrate this milestone, a number of my colleagues and I recently appeared on our Index Investment Strategy team’s weekly call (sign up for the daily dashboard to receive the invite). If you couldn’t make it, here are a…
As China’s economy matures, consumption and service-related industries are becoming structurally more important. Because the country’s stock market continues to have significant exposure to “old economy” sectors, many market participants are seeking alternative index solutions to participate more directly in China’s fastest growing areas. Launched in September 2016, the S&P New China Sectors Index provides…
Global equities enjoyed substantial gains in the last quarter of 2020, gaining 15.9%, as measured by the S&P Global BMI. Shariah-compliant benchmarks, including the S&P Global BMI Shariah and Dow Jones Islamic Market (DJIM) World Index, slightly underperformed their conventional counterparts in Q4 2020 due to the strong performance of the conventional Financials sector, which…
One of the major trends in the last few years has been the outperformance of large, growth-oriented stocks and, at first glance, 2020 represented a continuation of this trend. For example, the S&P 500® Growth (33.5%) outperformed the S&P 500 Value (1.4%) by 32.1% last year, the largest difference in calendar year total returns between…
For many equity investors, the stand-out theme of last year was the reversal in the market’s initial response to, and recovery from, the COVID-19 pandemic: the dramatic price declines in March, the wild swings around the bottom as VIX® marked its highest closing level ever, and the just-as-dramatic recovery to new all-time highs by late…
Can REITs help unlock potential income opportunities in today’s markets? S&P DJI’s Priscilla Luk and Samsung Asset Management’s Alex Yang take a closer look at practical applications for REITs in the current environment.
To say that the world is different now than it was a year ago would be an astounding understatement. COVID-19 brought about once unimaginable conditions and changes. In the financial realm, market volatility spiked and remains markedly higher across all sectors compared to the beginning of 2020. Yet, observing the market based purely on performance,…
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