News & Research

The EURO STOXX 50 Volatility-Balanced index, which combines an investment in stocks with a dynamic allocation to volatility futures, jumped 8% on August 5 amid a broad equities sell-off. The volatility strategy has returned an average of 3.2 percentage points a year above its benchmark since 2006 as tail-risk protection paid off.

A portfolio’s decarbonization becomes more difficult once an emissions reduction of 60% is achieved, as high-emissions sectors become depleted. Thereafter, the portfolio construction approach — whether exclusion or optimization — will make a difference to the resulting tracking error and size of the portfolio.

As biodiversity garners increased attention and data availability expands, understanding its effect on portfolios becomes paramount. In our first edition of Perspectives, we spotlight how ISS ESG’s innovative methodologies can help assess a portfolio’s impact and natural capital dependencies.

A new study from specialists at BlackRock and STOXX explores the potential benefits of low tracking-error, multifactor portfolios. While factor investing has historically been dominated by single-factor strategies with relatively strong tilts, the authors show that diversification across multiple factors with smaller tilts and less tracking error can pay off in the long run.

Recent market developments and investing trends have prompted investors to reconsider their investment allocations. Factors assist investors in understanding the present market and informing their investment decisions. Melissa Brown, Managing Director of Applied Research, joins two experts to discuss factor investing in this video.

Melissa Brown elaborated on how the Fed is walking a fine line between tightening too much and driving the economy into recession or not tightening enough and keeping inflation high.

Melissa Brown joined Bloomberg Markets to discuss the narrow equity market rally and why equities are doing so well despite an anticipated recession. Additionally, we also talked about the recent trading volume uptick and expectations for the upcoming FOMC meeting.

Qontigo has announced the new composition of the STOXX Europe 600 Index. This is an amendment of the previous changes in composition of the STOXX Europe 600 Index, announced on June 1, 2023.

This article provides a high-level refresher of what tracking error means, and how we can embed it directly into portfolio construction.

Our analysis shows how an optimized sustainability index can decrease active risk and free up more of the risk budget to be allocated to the desired sustainability metric(s), making the resulting portfolio a suitable replacement for a traditional benchmark.

The collapse of a Californian bank triggered a rapidly-spreading banking crisis, with Europe suffering the brunt of it. European Banks, Financial Services firms and Insurers have fallen more than their US counterparts, while the risk of each one of those sectors in Europe has jumped.

The recent collapse of several banks has sparked fears of a 2011-style “doom loop,” in which losses in the financial sector spread to the wider economy. So far, contagion has been limited, but a further deterioration in credit quality could result in drawdowns across all sectors.