Research Report

According to recent surveys, asset owners’ have shifted their main focus to ESG’s financial benefits, as opposed to social benefits. In the third part of this paper, we discuss how ESG can be integrated into indexed allocations using MSCI ESG Ratings, which provided better risk-adjusted returns from August 2010 to December 2017 than the MSCI ACWI Index. We used existing best-in-class selection-based index methodologies (the MSCI ESG Leaders Index) for the creation of hypothetical global and...

Indexes ESG Products & Services

Research Report

Many institutional investors are increasingly focused on the gender composition of company boards. Our latest research shows that companies in the MSCI World Index with strong female leadership generated a Return on Equity of 10.1% per year versus 7.4% for those without, as of September 9, 2015, though we could not establish causality. We found that companies lacking board diversity suffered more governance-related controversies than average. Global asset owners are promoting a 30% global...

ESG Products & Services Research and Screening

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Research Report

Research Report

2018 marked the 10-year anniversary of the MSCI Minimum Volatility Indexes. Launching just prior to the global financial crisis, which caused sharp equity market falls, and the indexes’ behavior “out-of-sample” since launch have led to adoption by a large number of asset owners and the indexes’ serving as the basis for a wide range of ETFs that have gathered significant assets. Here, we contrast 10 years of live data with the previous 10 years of backtesting, investigating changes in the...

Indexes

Research Report

The MSCI Multi-Asset Class (MAC) Factor Model introduces several major advances in risk modeling, including systematic MAC strategy factors, a next-generation fixed income model, and improved equity models. This document demonstrates the value of the MSCI MAC Factor Model in forecasting risk, based on (1) visual inspection of the risk forecasts and realized returns, and (2) statistical tests. The MSCI MAC Factor Model is evaluated on an absolute (stand-alone) basis, and is also compared with...

Portfolio Management Analytics Risk Management Analytics BarraOne

MSCI Blog

Private-capital funds enjoyed record inflows from 2014 to 2018, as asset owners sought high-returning assets that had low correlations to traditional public asset classes. Did private capital deliver?

MSCI Blog

As an asset class, real estate typically has a high degree of home bias, especially when compared to equities and fixed income. However, this home bias is starting to erode, with asset owners in most countries already investing internationally or actively exploring options for building off-shore exposures.

Research Report

Accurately estimating factor exposures for stocks and portfolios can be economically relevant and may improve the investment process for a variety of investors, including asset owners, quantitative managers, wealth managers and risk managers. Methods for measuring exposures vary, however. We provide a comparative analysis of two such techniques — one based on time-series regression models, the other on observable firm characteristics.

Indexes Portfolio Management Analytics

Research Report

This year’s Real Estate Research Snapshot highlights the broad range of investment problems MSCI Real Estate’s data can be applied to. With emphasis on the importance of global consistency in data we provide an overview of global property market trends across sectors and markets. As part of the wider MSCI business, we also explore issues relevant to asset owners, looking at real estate from a higher perspective. Questions surrounding interest rate risk and currency hedging are addressed here,...

Real Estate Products & Services