Daily Index Insights offers a concise two-minute read on the latest news and trends in index markets. This resource includes performance data from S&P Dow Jones Indices across equities, fixed income, multi-asset, commodities, and factors. Our daily insights are designed to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of market movements, empowering you to make informed decisions based on the most current indices data and analysis.
If you haven’t yet, check out the April edition of The Market Measure here.
“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
Terry Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015)
Happy Birthday to one of the world’s best-known football (or, for our American readers, soccer) stadiums, London’s Wembley, which opened its doors 102 years ago today. Called “the cathedral of football” by legendary Brazilian player Pelé, the venue played host to many memorable matches, including the 1953 “Match of the Century”, where Hungary bet England 6 : 3, the home country’s first ever defeat in Wembley. The original Stadium was given a complete makeover in the early years of the 21st century that ensures its place amongst the world’s premier sports venues for the next century. Here is your daily dashboard.
- The S&P 500® capped off its second-best week since last November with a gain of 0.7% on Friday. High Beta was last week’s winner among large cap segments, up 8.6%, while defensive Low Vol and Staples slipped 0.5% and 1.3%, respectively.
- On this side of the pond it’s been an excellent month for European infrastructure: the Dow Jones Brookfield Europe Infrastructure Index, which is designed to measure the performance of pure-play infrastructure companies in Europe, is not only the best performer in April among all our reported global factor indices on page 4 of our dashboard but also hit a new all-time high on Friday. The index’s total return since launch in July 2008 is 291%, corresponding to an annualized return of 8.5% in EUR.
-
What’s been a great month for European Infrastructure is shaping up to be a pretty awful one for the S&P Europe 350 Daily Risk Control 15%. It is not only the worst-performing factor index on page 4 of our dashboard, but its underperformance relative to its parent index, at 7.2%, is on track to be by far the worst since the index’s launch in 2009 (its prior worst month on a relative basis was in April 2020, having lagged the S&P Europe 350 by 4.5% that month).
- Turning to commodities, while most attention have been focused on gold, coffee has performed way better this month, YTD and over the past 12 months as well. Coffee is the best-performing S&P GSCI constituent both YTD and over the past year, up 31% and 93%, respectively (vs. 24% and 39%, respectively, for Gold). And while I and many others may be grumbling over the increased cost of our morning caffeine boost, equity investors in some of the world’s largest coffee grower nations have benefited: so far this year, Brazilian and Colombian stocks are up 21% and 34% in USD, respectively, with the latter the second-best performer among 48 S&P Global BMI regions.
- This week is probably the most important during the Q1 earnings season, as Amazon, Apple, Coca Cola, Mastercard, Meta, Microsoft and Visa will all be among the many S&P 500 members that are set to report results. Apart from earnings, guidance for the rest of the year will also get much attention as investors try to parse the potential impact of tariffs (which themselves are subject to change anytime...). Fasten your seatbelts!
