Tag Archives: S&P 500 Equal Weight Index
Magnificent Mid Caps and Sensational Small Caps
U.S. equities rose in 2023, with the mega-cap “Magnificent Seven” driving most of the S&P Composite 1500®’s 25% gain. While mega caps continued to outperform in January 2024, not all seven of the aforementioned group ranked highly. This has led to some market commentators looking to coin new phrases: “Sensational Six” or “Super Six” (the…
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2023 Market Review for Asian Investors
There are potential diversification benefits for Asian investors who incorporate U.S. equities to alleviate their tendency for a home country bias. Representing nearly 60% of the global equity market, as measured by the S&P Global BMI, U.S. equities provide a larger opportunity set outside of Asia, along with potential diversification due to different economic structures…
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An Elevating Effect on Equal Weight?
The trouncing of smaller caps by mega-cap stocks has been one of the hallmark market themes of this year, with the S&P 500® Top 50 outpacing the S&P SmallCap 600® by 30% YTD.1 As a result of its inherent small-cap bias, the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index (EWI) has suffered accordingly, underperforming the S&P 500…
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Mean Reversion
Over more than 20 years of live history, the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index has outperformed the S&P 500 by a substantial margin. Between Dec. 31, 1990, and June 30, 2023, Equal Weight’s compound annual growth rate was 11.82%, well ahead of the cap-weighted S&P 500 at 10.55%. This performance edge is a product of…
- Categories Equities, Factors, S&P 500 & DJIA
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Equally Weighting within Sectors: Impact and Potential Applications
The outperformance of equal weight indices is well documented, especially for the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index’s 20 years of live history. Equal Weight’s relative returns reflect the impact of several important index characteristics. For example, smaller-size exposure and (anti-) momentum effects together account for around 75% of the historical variation of its relative returns….
When the Winds Change
“Change is the investor’s only certainty.” Thomas Rowe Price, Jr. 2022 marked several major changes in market trends amid a substantial shift in global macroeconomic regimes. After historic levels of stimulus, multi-decade highs in inflation across several major economies led to monetary tightening. This shift weighed on asset classes in many regions, and traditional routes…
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Examining Equal Weight
In this tumultuous market characterized by Fed rate hikes, elevated inflation and a strong dollar, mega-cap growth companies have suffered heavy losses, paced by recent “Big Tech” earnings disappointments from Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and others. The S&P 500® Top 50 declined by 19% over the past 12 months, underperforming the S&P 500 by 5%….
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Watch Your Weighting Scheme
2022 has witnessed a recalibration across financial markets, as investors have digested the impact of higher interest rates amid elevated inflation. Despite bouts of optimism that the U.S. Federal Reserve would take a more dovish stance, and better-than-expected corporate earnings, Exhibit 1 shows that the vast majority of large-, mid- and small-cap indices declined through…
Can Equal Weight ESG Indices Pull Their Weight?
Research has shown that equally weighted indices have historically posted long-term outperformance1 over their benchmarks—largely driven by their exposures to small size and value along with associated risk premia, in addition to a healthy dose of concentration reduction.2 However, in accessing compensated factors and reducing concentration, the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index could elicit some…
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Valuing Equal Weight
We have previously discussed the impact of Equal Weight’s rebound on its exposure to the momentum factor. We now turn our attention to its exposure to the value factor, as the recovery in smaller caps and value stocks has been an important tailwind for the strategy. The S&P 500® Equal Weight is typically biased toward…