The PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Portfolio ETF (SPLV) has received this year’s William F. Sharpe Award for ETF Product of the Year. The fund, which debuted on the NYSE Arca in May 2011 and has since surpassed $3 billion in assets under management, was recognised as having had the most significant impact on the ETF market over the previous 12 months.
The fund tracks the S&P 500 Low Volatility Index, a low-volatility version of S&P’s flagship equity index, providing investors with access to a diversified portfolio of US blue-chip stocks with historically lower volatility.
The William F. Sharpe Awards recognise the best and the brightest innovators in the field of indexing, ETFs, and investment management. This year’s awards were presented at the 2012 Global Indexing & ETFs Conference held in Phoenix, Arizona, US.
Ben Fulton, Invesco PowerShares managing director of global ETFs, said: “We would like to thank our industry peers for honouring Invesco PowerShares with the 2012 William F. Sharpe Award for ETF Product of the Year.”
He added: “The PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Portfolio (SPLV) was a groundbreaking listing that opened the door for investors seeking to reduce volatility in their core portfolios and has become the flagship ETF in this space. The concept of using low-volatility strategies to achieve long term capital growth objectives has been steadily gaining interest with advisors and investors.”
The fund’s underlying benchmark, the S&P 500 Low Volatility Index, consists of the 100 stocks from the S&P 500 Index with the lowest realised volatility over the past 12 months. Volatility is a statistical measurement of the magnitude of up and down asset price fluctuations over time.
Since inception through November 30, 2012, the fund achieved a total return including dividends of 18.31% versus a total return of 9.91% for the conventional S&P 500 Index, and it has done so with approximately 30% less volatility.
UK investors are able to gain exposure to this index via the SPDR S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (USLV) listed on the London Stock Exchange. The SPDR fund is also available to European investors via a listing on the Deutsche Börse (ticker: SPY1). [See SSgA launches SPDR S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF].
For information about William F. Sharpe, please visit his Stanford University page:
http://www.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/