Blog posts

Historically, market capitalization-weighted indices have been the tool for asset owners to benchmark and construct their investment portfolios.

When it comes to evaluating the success of equity portfolios or constructing a traditional passive investment strategy, the go-to instrument has usually been the market capitalization-weighted index.

October’s market move is the type of event that can determine a portfolio performance for the entire year. The sharp pullback in stocks has underscored the benefits of a low-volatility strategy: holding the less risky parts of the market has often been worth the price of missing out on the beta rallies.

The Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the UN-backed group that works to advance sustainability in the asset-management industry, announced earlier this year that it is establishing new minimum requirements for membership.

Equity markets sold off by the most in six years in October, amid investor concerns that rising bond yields and a slowdown in China will stymie global growth.

This month, the STOXX® GC Pooling EUR Deferred Funding Rate (GC Pooling Deferred), a benchmark of overnight borrowing costs in Europe, turned five years old, as did the full STOXX GC Pooling money market curve. 

The first edition of Morningstar’s European Active/Passive Barometer shows the extent to which active managers in the region have underperformed their passive peers in recent years, suggesting the active-management industry must contend not only with high costs but with poor returns too. 

Inderpal Gujral, Head of Product at STOXX, discussed ideas on thematic investing at the Inside ETFs event that was held in London on Oct. 1–2, 2018.

Factor investing has gained enormous traction in recent years as a transparent and low-cost way to exploit widely-acknowledged sources of market-excess returns, so-called risk premia.

Socially responsible investing (SRI) has in recent years become a major consideration in the asset-management industry. Three recent surveys help shed light on the high level of adoption among both institutional and retail investors. 

Global equity indices rose in September, helped by a continued bull market in US shares, a multi-month jump for Japanese stocks and a mild rebound in Europe. 

September 2018 marked the tenth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, an event that epitomizes the traumatic happenings of 2008.