FTSE Russell Index Ideas

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Stephanie Maier, global head of sustainable at FTSE Russell, rejoins us to discuss the results of FTSE Russell’s 9th Annual Sustainable Investment Asset Owner Survey. She describes the record levels of adoption of sustainable investment, how climate risk concerns have intensified and why governance, tax and shareholder rights are now asset owners’ top priority.

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Matt Monach, senior manager of equity quant research and index design at FTSE Russell, looks at the equity quality factor, which combines measures of profitability and leverage. He discusses the striking recent divergence between profits and cash flow amidst the heavy infrastructure spending on the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Abhi Desai, Senior Analyst, Fixed Income Custom Solutions at FTSE Russell and Olivier Genin, Deputy Head Investment and Product Strategy, Head of Fixed Income and Responsible Investing Product Strategy, Amundi ETF and Indexing, discuss the design and use cases of FTSE GDP-Weighted World Government Bond index (WGBI), in which constituent country weights are determined by economic footprint, rather than the market value of debt in issue. 

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Paul Clarke, head of FX benchmark product management at FTSE Russell, talks about the unique role played by benchmarks in the global currency markets. He describes the design features, use cases and oversight of the WMR FX benchmarks, which provide an objective, reliable and representative snapshot of FX rates across global markets.

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Stephanie Maier, global head of sustainable at FTSE Russell and Thomas Bremner Bligaard, Managing Director and co-founder of Planetrics, talk about climate scenarios following the fracturing of the global consensus on 2050 net-zero targets. They discuss how best to price climate risk and integrate transition and physical risk into a combined portfolio view.

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Lee Clements, director of applied sustainable investment research at FTSE Russell, discusses the energy shock triggered by the 2026 Iran war, its likely impact on economies and the energy transition and how the shock has affected the risk and return characteristics of different FTSE Russell sustainable indices.

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Sergiy Lesyk, director of research and analytics at FTSE Russell, looks at one of the classic equity market factors—value. He explains why value investors have faced a tough time in recent years and how definitions of value have also been questioned. Lesyk discusses FTSE Russell’s approach to building value portfolios and how best to remove off-target exposures.

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Matt Monach, senior manager, research at FTSE Russell, explains the design and use cases of the FTSE Real Assets Industry Select Equity Index Series (FTSE RAISE), a new index family designed to help investors diversify away from the AI boom and gain exposure to companies whose value is rooted in real, hard, economically critical assets. 

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Robin Marshall, director of fixed income research at FTSE Russell, and Gary Tan, FX and rates derivatives manager at SGX, discuss the FTSE Asia Pacific Liquid Government Bond Index Series and its role as the reference benchmark for new dollar-based futures contracts on the Singapore Exchange.

In this episode of FTSE Russell Index Ideas, Catherine Yoshimoto, director of product management at FTSE Russell, talks about the design and use cases of the new Russell 9000 Global index, which builds on the 40-year history of the Russell index series to bring together US, developed ex-US and emerging markets stocks in a single benchmark.