NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) announced today that the MSCI ACWI Index, the company’s flagship gauge of global equity markets, closed Wednesday at 866.402, the highest in its 23-year history and the third straight day of record highs.
The index, which comprises 2,484, large and mid-cap stocks across developed and emerging markets, covers approximately 85% of the global investable equity market.1
The record reflects a surge in global stocks across sectors fueled by investors’ expectations that tax cuts and other policies promised by the U.S. administration will benefit business, according to Raman Aylur Subramanian, MSCI’s head of equity applied research.
Amid the rally, the small-cap segment of the market has outperformed the large and mid-cap segments, he notes. MSCI’s ACWI IMI Index, which includes small-cap stocks, ended Wednesday up 5.94% since January 1.
“Institutional investors are increasingly allocating strategically to the small-cap equity segment, taking an ‘all-cap’ approach to their core portfolios,” Subramanian said. “The MSCI ACWI IMI Indexes reach beyond large and mid-cap stocks to capture small caps, which represent 14% of the global equity opportunity set.”
Other MSCI indexes have climbed this year as well. The MSCI Emerging Markets IMI Index, which is designed to capture 99% of the free-float adjusted market capitalization across 23 emerging markets countries, has moved up 10.37% year-to-date, as of Wednesday. Similarly, MSCI’s World IMI Index, which captures large, mid and small-cap representation across 23 developed markets, is up 5.43% for the year.
More than $10 trillion in assets under management is estimated to be benchmarked to MSCI’s indexes worldwide, including over $2.7 trillion to the MSCI ACWI index family.2
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About MSCI
For more than 45 years, MSCI’s research-based indexes and analytics have helped the world’s leading investors build and manage better portfolios. Clients rely on our offerings for deeper insights into the drivers of performance and risk in their portfolios, broad asset class coverage and innovative research.
Our line of products and services includes indexes, analytical models, data, real estate benchmarks and ESG research.
MSCI serves 97 of the top 100 largest money managers, according to the most recent P&I ranking.
For more information, visit us at www.msci.com.
None of the information contained in this press release constitutes an offer to sell (or a solicitation of an offer to buy), any security, financial product or other investment vehicle or any trading strategy.
It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Exposure to an asset class or trading strategy or other category represented by an index is only available through third party investable instruments (if any) based on that index. MSCI does not issue, sponsor, endorse, market, offer, review or otherwise express any opinion regarding any fund, ETF, derivative or other security, investment, financial product or trading strategy that is based on, linked to or seeks to provide an investment return related to the performance of any MSCI index (collectively, “Index Linked Investments”). MSCI makes no assurance that any Index Linked Investments will accurately track index performance or provide positive investment returns. MSCI Inc. is not an investment adviser or fiduciary and MSCI makes no representation regarding the advisability of investing in any Index Linked Investments.
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Other factors that could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements can be found in MSCI's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on February 26, 2016, as amended, and in quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K filed with the SEC. If any of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if our underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary significantly from what MSCI projected. Any forward-looking statement in this press release reflects MSCI's current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to MSCI's operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. MSCI assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.
1 As of Jan. 31, 2017
2 As of June 2016,
reported in September 2016 by eVestment, Morningstar and Bloomberg
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