Since its inception, the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index has outperformed the S&P 500 by 1.4% annually. Year-over-year performance margins, however, are anything but steady. Exhibit 1 shows that the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index and its cap-weight counterpart have gone through many performance cycles over the past 30 years. Mega caps experienced record performance Read more […]
Consistently outperforming the S&P 500® is difficult. The S&P Dow Jones Indices SPIVA report shows that less than 18% of funds outperformed the S&P 500 (SPX) over the five-year period ending 12/31/2018. So how is it that the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index (SPEWI), a passive index comprised of the very same 500 stocks, accomplished Read more […]
The performance of U.S. equity factors during Q2 was lackluster, with most underperforming the S&P 500, as seen in Exhibit 1. While Minimum Volatility and Low Volatility were notable exceptions, Value, Quality, High Beta, and Momentum all lagged the benchmark – in large part because of their tilt toward smaller companies. Since most factor indices Read more […]
In a prior blog, we demonstrated that the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index was a more difficult benchmark to outperform than the S&P 500 over intermediate- to long-term investment horizons. In this blog post, we examine the underlying factor exposures of the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index to evaluate the performance of large-cap managers. As Read more […]
In January 2003, S&P Dow Jones Indices introduced the world’s first equal-weighted index, the S&P 500® Equal Weight Index, leading the way for the subsequent development of non-market-cap weighted indices.[1] Since then, looking at the index’s historical back-tested performance, it outperformed its market-cap-weighted counterpart, the S&P 500, in 16 out of 28 years, with an Read more […]
Factor investing is a well-documented method of generating excess returns, but some of the practical aspects of it are often overlooked in academic research, which tends to focus on “pure” premiums. Investors wanting to access these factors – size, value, volatility, momentum, etc. – are presented with a number of investment alternatives that aim to Read more […]
