We recently held a webinar examining the relevance of the S&P 500 to India-based investors, the potential diversification benefits of incorporating U.S equity exposure to an existing allocation, as well as showing how difficult active managers have found it to beat the index, historically. You can watch a replay of the webinar here; here are Read more […]
On February 19th, the S&P 500® closed at an all-time high of 3386; last night, exactly one month later it closed at 2409, a 29% decline from the high. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what’s happened over the last month. We should first start by putting the decline into historical context. The peak-to-trough Read more […]
The last few weeks have definitely felt like a “where were you when…?” moment as coronavirus fears spread around the world and many people’s day-to-day lives have been disrupted. Amid the anxiety and disruption, global financial markets nosedived, sending all major equity indices tumbling, VIX® soaring to levels not seen since the financial crisis, and Read more […]
Every year, certain trends take centre stage and help to explain market returns. For example, expectations over trade negotiations and Fed policy were useful for explaining market performance in 2019. Many of these developments often appear obvious with the benefit of hindsight, but identifying the trends and their subsequent impact in advance is far from Read more […]
We recently published a research paper, “Building Better International Small-Cap Benchmarks,” offering a comprehensive look at the recently launched S&P Global SmallCap Select Index Series. These indices are designed to measure the performance of small-cap companies with positive earnings. Why incorporate positive earnings criteria into small-cap benchmarks? The initial foundation stems from two prior studies[1],[2]; Read more […]
Coming into month-end, and as the street prepares its monthly summaries, (all figures are as of May 29th), the S&P 500 looks set to complete the month with a loss of around 5%. So, what went wrong? Global markets started the year very positively: the S&P 500 was up 18% by the end of April, Read more […]
The fourth quarter of 2018 was pretty turbulent for global equities. Volatility and correlations rose, the majority of the S&P Global BMI’s 48 country constituents declined by double digits, recent darlings among factor strategies (momentum and growth) lagged, and the S&P 500’s 13.52% quarterly plunge left the benchmark with its first calendar-year loss in a Read more […]
How much should a portfolio manager be willing to pay for research? This is a question any manager has to answer, but it has recently become more pertinent as newly imposed European rules require the costs of investment research to be unbundled from trading. Here is a brief overview of a stylized framework for estimating Read more […]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released its World Economic Outlook, October 2018, with estimated global trade tension scenario impacts on GDP. Overall, the IMF states that recent tariffs will hurt GDP and that additional tariffs will weaken it further. In the long term, according to the IMF’s scenario analysis (on p. 21,) the U.S. GDP Read more […]
Over the past decade, the combination of low interest rate environments and shifting demographics has made income-focused investment strategies extremely popular. In constructing an income-producing equity index, the dividend yield of a security serves as a key criteria for eligibility and security selection. Dividend yield is usually calculated as a percentage of a stock’s annual Read more […]
