As China continues to open its capital markets to global investors and accessibility standards have improved, MSCI recently launched a consultation to explore increasing the weight of A shares in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Ultimately, we seek to reflect the full investable opportunity set — all of China accessible to global investors — in the benchmark, as we do in all MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes.

Emerging markets may never be the same. On May 31, MSCI will include about 233 China large-cap A shares to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Inclusion at a 5% initial weight could lead to approximately USD 22 billion of capital inflows into these stocks. What might investors need to consider as we approach this milestone?

MSCI’s recent announcement that it will add 222 China A shares to its key benchmarks raises practical questions for global and emerging market investors: How does it affect their investment policy? How can they implement these exposures (whether or not they already have China A shares in their portfolios)? While inclusion of China A shares is a year away, institutional investors may want to start planning for how this change may affect their portfolios.  Longer term, if China continues...

During our consultations on whether to add China A-shares to MSCI’s Emerging Markets Index, some institutional investors asked what full inclusion might mean for the index and the asset class. Given China’s already-significant weight in the index, would the addition of shares of local Chinese companies, even if years away, reduce diversification of the index and render the asset class irrelevant?

A rise in relative valuation of the low volatility factor and a concurrent fall-off in the value factor have led some institutional investors to wonder anew whether it makes sense to time their exposures to systematic strategies. In short, has value become so cheap (relative to the market) that investors may want to pivot toward it? And does a relatively rich valuation for minimum volatility tell investors it’s time to back off?

It may be time for institutional investors to rethink whether to hedge their exposures to foreign currencies. Though hedging can help investors avoid losing money amid swings in the foreign-exchange market, the strategy can be an expensive one for investors based in countries with structurally low interest rates.

As we highlighted in a recent post, minimum volatility strategies have outperformed this year to date amid unrest in financial markets.

Ever since central banks slashed interest rates in response to the Global Financial Crisis, many institutional and retail investors turned to high dividend-paying equities to meet their needs for income. However, a naïve high-yielding equity strategy can expose itself to various “yield traps,” such as those stemming from temporarily high earnings, high payouts or low stock price. We find that the yield factor has tended to perform well during a structurally low and rising interest rate...

The quality factor has demonstrated long-term outperformance against the market, but it has not received the same attention as the value, size or momentum factors.

Institutional investors are increasingly gravitating towards multi-factor allocations as the preferred approach to factor investing. But how should factor indexes be combined?

Multi-factor indexes are important tools for institutional investors seeking diversified exposure to factors that have historically generated premia over long horizons. In this Research Spotlight, we examine the new MSCI Diversified Multi-Factor (DMF) Index family, which selects stocks with exposures to the value, momentum, quality and low size factors, while keeping risk at the level of the market.

Maximizing Factor Exposure While Controlling Volatility. May 2015 Multi-factor indexes are important tools for investors seeking diversified exposure to factors that have historically generated premia over long horizons.  In this Research Insight, we examine the new MSCI Diversified Multiple-Factor (DMF) Index family. These indexes combine four well-researched factors — value, momentum, size and quality — with a control mechanism designed to keep volatility close to the level of the...

China A-Shares are too big to be ignored but remain difficult for many institutional investors to access. How can global investors avoid a stock market that is now the world’s third-largest, with a total market value of nearly USD 4 trillion, putting it just behind the United States and Japan?

Multi-factor index fund allocations are increasingly becoming the preferred approach to factor investing. In this paper, we examine the return/risk characteristics of nine static and dynamic weighting strategies over a 36-year period. The results highlight that a simple strategy that equal weights multiple factor indexes has historically proved more effective than many of the more complex approaches - pointing to its potential as a way to combine factors, especially in the absence of...

This paper reviews the implications for global institutional investors of the recent developments in the China A-share market, which has expanded tremendously over the last two decades. Today, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges have a total market capitalization of about USD 3.9 trillion dollars of which foreign participation accounts for just over 1% percent. Since the end of 2011, Chinese authorities have embarked on a series of efforts to accelerate the opening of the domestic...

We’ve observed that many institutional investors have abandoned their historical domestic-equity bias and now view global equities as a single, broad asset class. In high-growth economies, however, particularly in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America, many investors remain focused primarily on domestic stocks.

The paper lays out the foundations and benefits of global investing, examining the topic from the perspective of investors in high growth countries. It demonstrates that a global equity framework can provide diversification and higher long-term risk-adjusted returns for investors from high growth countries who often hold home-biased equity portfolios that can have high concentration risk.

The last decade has seen a prolific increase in approaches to emerging markets investing. Broad emerging markets exposure is increasingly viewed as an integral part of a global equity allocation alongside developed markets. The acronym style of emerging markets investing has also come forth (including BRIC, N-11, CIVETS, MIST, etc.), seeking more targeted exposure within emerging markets. We explore this wide array of emerging markets mandate configurations and implementation options.

In recent years, many institutional investors have been increasingly recognizing that the long-term sustainability of their investments matters. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors are becoming important considerations for investors to focus on given their influence on a portfolio's risk and return profile. Some asset owners are starting to embrace the concept of "Universal Ownership", where they see the long-term exposure to the whole economy through their portfolio...

Japan’s domestic bonds constitute one of the major asset classes for Japanese pension plan sponsors. In this Research Bulletin, we use the Barra Integrated Model (BIM) to examine the evolution of this market and better understand the relationship between bonds and equities in Japan.