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 […]
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 […]
The S&P DJI index strategy team has for several years produced a variety of monthly and quarterly index dashboards. Earlier this year, we began to provide a daily summary of what S&P DJI indices and research are telling us about the markets on a day-to-day basis. (The summary is e-mailed daily to subscribers; see the Read more […]
“Not enough progress has been made in closing the gender gap, and in fact, in some countries, you have seen gender inequality increasing…” – Ángel Gurría, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This was the opening of a recent speech at #WomenRule by Politico on a paper newly published by S&P Read more […]
Most S&P and Dow Jones Shariah-compliant benchmarks outperformed their conventional counterparts in Q1 2018, as the information technology sector—which tends to be overweight in Islamic Indices—led the market by a wide margin, and financials—which is underrepresented in Islamic indices—matched the returns of the broad market. The Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index and S&P Global Read more […]
Almost a decade after the global financial crisis, the S&P Global BMI (Broad Market Index), a measure of the global stock market has gained 234.4% from its bottom on March 9, 2009. As of January 26, 2018, the index level was 33.7% above its pre-crisis high that happened on October 31, 2007. Interestingly, the current Read more […]