Tag Archives: Chris Bennett
From “Hard to Beat” to Nigh-On Impossible
Our SPIVA® reports have shown, year after year, that market-cap weighted benchmarks are, to put it kindly, hard to beat. However, in 2019 a range of circumstances made “hard to beat” become nigh-on impossible for the S&P 500®. In general, there are three common ways by which an active portfolio can outperform its benchmark: over…
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The Road Less Traveled
It is a truth universally acknowledged that liquidity is critical to market health; typically when liquidity falls, volatility rises. The Financial Times recently cited claims that the increased use of passive investment vehicles had caused trading volumes in individual S&P 500 constituents to decline. Should we be alarmed? In reality, the notion that single-stock traders…
- Categories Equities, S&P 500 & DJIA, Strategy, Uncategorized
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Illustrating the Value of Liquidity
Let’s suppose for a moment that you are given a choice between two hypothetical exchange traded funds (ETFs) tracking the same index. Fund A has an annual management fee of 0.4% while Fund B has an annual management fee of 0.1%. At first glance, Fund B seems like the better option: it offers similar performance…
- Categories Equities, Strategy, Uncategorized
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Mayday, Mayday!
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,…
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Can All the Children be Above Average?
February has been a great month for factor index performance: of the 17 S&P 500®-based factor indices reported in our quarterly factor dashboard, 11 have outperformed the “vanilla” S&P 500 so far. Our indices focused on quality and shareholder return are having particularly strong months, with the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats®, the S&P 500 Buyback…
As goes January, so … what?
“The more you look at ‘common knowledge’, the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge” – Idries Shah, Reflections Statements such as “sell in May and go away” can become accepted wisdom without always facing proper scrutiny. Another aphorism, particularly timely at the present moment, is…
- Categories S&P 500 & DJIA, Strategy
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Raising the Bar in Small Caps
As a leading index provider with clients and customers around the world, S&P Dow Jones Indices regularly launches new indices. Just like our children, we try to love them all equally. Every now and then, however, a particularly exciting new index comes along. Last week, our global equities group launched a potentially important new benchmark…
Volatility Rides Again
Global equity markets stumbled out of the gate in 2016, and still haven’t found their stride. Markets are experiencing an intense case of risk off sentiment, as investors flee from riskier assets in pursuit of safe havens. The yield of 10 year US Treasury Notes is down to less than 1.8%, while oft-maligned gold is…
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Energy: Fueling a Race to the Bottom
While consumers may enjoy the additional purchasing power provided by a decline in energy prices, Energy sector investors would prefer that they had a little more pain at the pump. The Energy sector of the S&P 500 is having a year to forget. The index is down 20% year to date on a total return…
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