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Factors in Focus: How Trendy Is Your Style Factor? 

Factor Investing , Risk Management

As markets rallied worldwide, investors took on high-beta exposure and rotated away from stocks with lower risk. The latest edition of Factors in Focus explores the details.

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Surging Corporate-Bond Supply: Reason to Worry? 

Fixed Income , Risk Management

In the months since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies issued a large amount of corporate bonds. As a result of this surge, corporate debt has grown substantially — a burden that institutional credit investors may wish to monitor closely.

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Short Interest Factor Performance in Times of Crisis 

Factors , Factor Investing , Global Investing

Given recent short interest factor performance, we asked: What has been the relationship between this factor and large market drawdowns? Were there changes in short selling during COVID-19? Did short-selling bans affect short interest factor performance?

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COVID-19 and Real Estate: The Devil Is in the Dispersion 

Real Estate Investing , Global Investing , Risk Management

Many real estate markets were showing signs of a slowdown even before COVID-19’s negative impact on property portfolios. Has this correction been similar to previous ones? We looked at dispersion of returns, within and across real estate sectors, for the answer.

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Consumer ABS: Recovering from Coronavirus? 

Risk Management , Fixed Income

After the U.S. COVID-19 lockdown, new monthly remittance reports for asset-backed securities indicated performance deterioration and signaled potential challenges ahead. Meanwhile, in China, ABS showed signs of recovery.

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Equity-Market Dislocation and Index-Based Investing 

Emerging Markets , Global Investing

Market turbulence amid COVID-19 presented risks and opportunities. We explore how indexes , combined with the use of fundamental data, provided a wealth of information to help identify potential market dislocations.

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Outcome-Oriented Factor Investing with a ‘Barbell’ Approach 

Factor Indexes , Factor Investing , Global Investing

Though relatively new to wealth investors, index-based factor investing has some similarity to a high-conviction, outcome-oriented approach. We explore combining the two when seeking outcomes such as equity growth, yield enhancement and risk mitigation.

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Building Better ESG Indexes: 30 Years On 

Global Investing , ESG Research

How ESG indexes have evolved over the past 30 years: A Q&A with Stuart Doole, head of new index development at MSCI, about his conversations with investors since the COVID19 crisis started, the growth of ESG investing and how MSCI Research uses AI and machine learning in developing its ESG indexes.

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Robust Selection Paid Dividends 

Global Investing

Dividend cuts following the COVID-19 slowdown led to approximately USD 194 billion of lost dividends between February and April 2020. An approach that looked beyond dividend-yield ranking would have avoided some affected companies, based on our analysis.

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Four COVID-19 Scenarios: What Might Happen Next? 

Fixed Income , Risk Management

Our latest COVID-19 stress test looks at four potential financial-market outcomes ranging from a swift V-shaped recovery to a pessimistic L-shaped scenario, in which outbreaks recur and lockdowns return well into 2021.