August 2020 Index Returns

Good morning and welcome to September.

Please find the monthly index returns for August below. For a summary of the returns:

• All equity benchmarks shown continued their positive momentum as all were up for August and the last three months.
  • I know this sounds redundant but US large growth led the way, followed by frontier markets.
  • For US large growth, it has accumulated the majority of its YTD return over the last three months.  And remember, the large growth category is primarily being driven by its top few names.  For example, in IWF, the iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF, the top five companies (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google) comprise almost 40% of the total index (source: iShares.com as of 8/31/2020).  Keep in mind the ETF holds 434 names in total.
  • The MSCI ACWI and MSCI EM benchmarks moved into positive territory YTD.
• With a risk-on view in equities, we saw most fixed income indexes in the red for the month.
  • Treasury rates 5 years and shorter were mostly stable for the month while longer term Treasury yields rose.  For example, the 10 yr went from 56 bps to 72 bps while the 10 yr rose from 1.23% to 1.49% during the month.  
  • All FI indexes are positive YTD and for all longer time periods shown.

If you have any questions, please contact support@xyinvestmentsolutions.com

As an additional note, please keep in mind that these reflect historical performance of the current models, not necessarily how accounts were invested in the past.