Russell, perhaps best-known in the index industry for the Russell 2000 Index covering domestic small-cap stocks, recently rolled out a benchmark covering what the firm calls the global “SMID” segment.

The new index covers the middle chunk of the market and then a little more—from the upper ranks of the small-cap segment to the bottom echelons of the large-cap segment. Essentially, the premise of the index seems to be that investment managers recognize that the largest companies don’t have a lot of significant growth ahead of them, while the very smallest companies often have significant risk factors, especially in emerging markets.

The Russell Global SMID Index appears to be an attempt to target a broad sweet spot, right in the middle of the global markets. A Russell representative said that the index represents the “SMID” market as defined by investment managers.

“Investment managers believe this space is attractive because many companies are well run but are not yet recognized,” noted another Russell representative, Senior Research Analyst James Carpenter.

The SMID index covers nearly 4,000 stocks ranging in size from $370 million to $5.3 billion, and can be broken down into multiple subindexes covering different styles or regions, such as emerging markets.