Thursday, December 2, 2010

There is a new World Equity Index from Russell Investments

Dr. David Krause, AIM program director stated, "We have been managing an international equity fund since September 2008. One of our early challenges was to find the right benchmark. Because we manage a fund that consists of ADRs, we chose the S&P ADR Index; however we noted that there were a limited number of world indexes that were available. The few indexes that existed were either biased toward developed countries or didn't recognize the newer equity opportunities in emerging countries, such as China and Brazil."

In an effort to provide an accurate benchmark to reflect this broader investment set, Russell Indexes has created the Russell World Cap Index. This new index combines the constituents of the U.S. broad market Russell 3000 Index and the Russell Global ex-U.S. Large Cap Index to provide a broader, investable global benchmark that represents the way U.S-based institutional investors and managers invest today. 

The following link will take you to Russell's working paper on the construction,
characteristics and use
of the new global equity index: