Tag Archives: S&P 500 Information Technology
Spot the Difference
From a U.S. equities perspective, the first month of 2026 started on a different trajectory compared to years past. S&P 500® performance trailed much of the rest of the world (as measured by the S&P World Ex-U.S. Index), and within the U.S., the performance of the S&P 500 Information Technology (“U.S. Tech”) ranked in the…
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Tech Tonics
U.S. equities have staged a remarkable recovery in the past few months, shrugging off inflation concerns, trade tensions and geopolitical risks, all of which has culminated in multiple all-time highs. Meanwhile, the significant outperformance of the momentum factor, or the continued strength of winning stocks, coupled with the dominance of a few mega-cap companies, especially…
A Tale of Two Markets
After the volatility witnessed in early April, U.S. equities have staged a remarkable recovery over the past couple of weeks, with the S&P 500® up 1% YTD through May 15, 2025, reversing its 15% YTD decline through April 8, 2025. Thanks to optimism surrounding easing tariff tensions and strong Big Tech earnings, mega caps have…
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S&P U.S. Indices Mid-Year 2023: Analyzing Relative Returns to CRSP
Following a challenging 2022, H1 2023 hosted a recovery among U.S. equities: the S&P 500® (up 16.9%) posted its fourth-best first half since 1996, and there were gains across the market cap spectrum. But on a relative basis, and in contrast to longer horizons, the S&P Core U.S. Equity Indices lagged their CRSP counterparts in…
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Towering Tech
The performance of large-cap Technology stocks so far this year has been exceptional, with the S&P 500® Information Technology sector outperforming the S&P 500 by 26% over the six-month period ending June 30, 2023—the 97th percentile of all observations in our database. Tech’s outperformance, driven by mega-cap strength, has been especially notable because of its…
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These Go to 11: Diversification with S&P 500 Sectors
Many strategies (including passive ones) hold large allocations to Information Technology. A “barbell” approach can mitigate risk from high exposure to one sector by pairing it with another. Do you remember sending your first email? For many, it was likely around the mid-1990s when a “googol” was still 10^100 rather than a verb and the…
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Sizing Sectors
After peaks in S&P 500® concentration, the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index has tended to outperform, suggesting that there is a relationship between changes in concentration and the relative performance of equal weighting. But, does this relationship also occur at the sector level? Using the historical adjusted HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index), we’ve previously established that concentration…
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Contemplating Concentration
After the exceptional performance of large-cap stocks in recent years, concentration concerns naturally come to mind. There are many ways to measure concentration. A simple method is to add up the weight of the top names, but the drawback with this approach is it doesn’t incorporate all the constituents in an index. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index…
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Concentrating on Technology
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…
Not Your Father’s Tech Sector
As of the end of August 2020, the S&P 500® Information Technology sector had risen a remarkable 36% YTD. Such outstanding relative performance of course reminds us of the late 1990s, when the markets experienced a technology bubble and subsequent bust. One notable resemblance to the late 1990s is Information Technology’s weight in the S&P…
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