Where Do We Go From Here?

by Steven Vale

FTSE International, one of the world’s major index providers, is reshaping its indexes and itself as it prepares for what it expects to be a dramatically different financial world in the future.

Will The Real Style Please Stand Up

by Peter Jankovskis, Ph.D.

By adding new stable vs. variable style classifications to traditional value vs. growth style analysis, the author identifies distinct styles of equity management not otherwise readily observed, and explores their distribution among institutional investors and the possible style underweighting it reveals.

Out of Style

by Sandi Weiskirch, Jay Flaherty

Many investment managers follow a different list of stocks than those included in well-known style indexes, leading to disparities in performance between style indexes and manager universes.

Can Volatility Be Your Friend?

by Neil Chelo, CFA

The author presents alternative ways to add alpha by exploiting observable extremes of behavior of market participants. He describes several overlay methodologies designed to do this using puts and calls that indexing-oriented plan administrators can implement at limited risk. He reports improved overall plan performance.

Exchange Traded Everything

by Antoine Eustache, Ph.D.

Managers of portfolios with commodity exposures may see the day when they are investing in exchange-traded products covering more commodities than they currently imagine.

Swapping Your Way Into European Credits

by Adapted from J.P. Morgan report by Peter Rappaport and Alan Cubbon

J.P. Morgan has introduced an index of credit exposure to Europe based on credit swaps. It is intended to solve a difficult problem for traditional bond investors: How to build a balanced investment in the European fixed-income market. It achieves much broader diversification than existing credit indexes that track outstanding bond issuance. The principle may be applicable to other credit markets.

Weighting The World

by Peter Leahy, Chris Pope

Weighting by market capitalization is a common but by no means the only way to allocate among developed-country markets. Depending on investor wants and needs, it may not be the best way either. State Street Global Advisors explains the major options considered by its clients.

How Now, Dow Jones?

by David Poole

David A. Poole, now retired and consulting from Chappaqua, NY, but formerly chief economist at mutual fund manager Van Eck Global, uses the Dow Jones Industrial Average to follow the seesaw movements of the stock market since the Dow’s inception in 1896, searching for repeating patterns both large and small.

News

New Funds for the Socially Responsible

Isdex Inventor Strikes Again —On Own

Tracking Index People

World’s Exchanges Get Into Indexes Act

London Has New ETF Market

BGI Beats SSgA In CanadianTIPS

CMBS Index from Banc of America

Indexes, Derivatives For European Bonds

J.P. Morgan’s European Credit Approach

New Non-US Index Funds

The Dogs of the Dow: Headed For The Pound?