By Varun Raju, Team Lead, Products, and Vaibhav Agarwal, Head of Products, Indxx.

The unrelenting growth of passive investing, owing to its ease and low costs, has further galvanized index providers and fund managers to discover innovative solutions and reduce market inefficiencies.

Guilt-free investing? Josh Gregory, Founder of Sugi, explains why investors still need to be cautious.

By Anthony Beevers, Portfolio Manager at First Trust Global Portfolios.

The Covid-19 vaccine announcement on 9 November 2020 triggered a significant factor rotation in favour of value. Given the rally that value has recently enjoyed, many will be wondering if they might have missed the boat.

According to Bloomberg Intelligence (BI), the decreased concentration of stocks associated with the clean energy theme within ETFs provides investors with broader and less volatile exposure. Still, warns BI, some companies like Sunworks still have close to 20% of their shares held by the ETFs so drastic price swings can still be expected.

By WisdomTree.

Commodities and gold have historically been an excellent hedge for inflation.

By Fiona Boal, Head of Commodities and Real Assets, S&P Dow Jones Indices.

While the S&P GSCI’s upward momentum attenuated, high dispersion in the performance of single commodities continued, albeit with reversals among the leaders and laggards.

By Daniel Barrera, Senior Associate, MSCI Research, and Simon Minovitsky, Vice President, Equity Research Team, MSCI.

During inflationary periods, equity investors, historically, have turned to gold as a hedge and diversifier. As the issue of inflation becomes more pressing, we ask whether cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, could have played a similar role.

By Rahul Sen Sharma, Managing Partner, and Varun Raju, Senior Analyst Index Research at Indxx.

Thematic ETFs, with an agenda to achieve value over the long term, have necessitated the birth of funds with far sights on the future.

By Anil Rao, Executive Director, Equity Solutions Research, and Thomas Verbraken, Executive Director, MSCI Research at MSCI.

Some investors may be concerned about crowding within the fast-growing thematic-investing segment. Using MSCI’s stock-crowding model, we identify crowded themes and run stress tests to understand how they might respond to an equity sell-off.

By William Sokol, Senior ETF Product Manager at VanEck.

Corporate bond investors are faced with a challenge in the current environment: sacrifice income or take more risk.