Morningstar has launched more than 60 new global equity indices. The firm’s index family now spans 45 countries in both developed and emerging markets.
The new indices provide investors with benchmarking tools that reflect the performance of equity markets worldwide and will serve as the foundation for the next generation of Morningstar “strategic beta” indices. Morningstar’s index business is part of the Morningstar Investment Management group.
Sanjay Arya, head of Morningstar Indexes says: “As more and more individual investors, advisers, and institutions take a global perspective to investing, our new index family will provide them with meaningful, consistent worldwide views across market capitalisations and regions to provide a deeper understanding of market behaviour throughout the globe.”
Morningstar’s new index family comprises global, regional, and country-specific indices using a transparent, rules-based methodology with a focus on the investability of the underlying securities. The new index family can help investors with:
• Market monitoring—Comprehensive and non-overlapping, the indices allow investors to analyse performance trends and market movements around the globe.
• Asset allocation—The global equity indices reflect the risk and return profiles of each developed and emerging market country and can help investors build better model portfolios.
• Attribution analysis—Investors can use the indices to perform attribution analysis to understand what drives a manager’s or portfolio’s performance.
Currently, the indices are available with end-of-day returns and constituent data in Morningstar DirectSM, the firm’s research platform for institutions. In the coming months, the company will add the indices into Morningstar Advisor WorkstationSM and Morningstar.com, investment platforms for advisers and individuals, respectively. Morningstar also plans to roll out real-time calculations early next year for the development of market monitoring tools and strategic beta indices. Morningstar defines strategic beta indices as those that seek to either improve performance or alter the level of risk relative to a standard benchmark.
