Standard & Poor’s doesn’t just want to go global covering the 25 or 30 more developed countries (see Global 1200 article nearby); it wants to be universal. Standard & Poor’s made that clear when it announced it would acquire the International Finance Corp.’s Emerging Markets Data Base which tracks over 2,200 stocks in 54 markets.

Fidelity Investments will keep price ceilings intact on four of its stock
index mutual funds in a bid to stay competitive in the low-cost index fund
market.

There are a number of costs attached to active management of portfolios that can vary
considerably from manager to manager, strategy to strategy, and market to market.

Stock indexes differ widely in terms of their composition. What effect, if any, does this have on
the efficiency of stock index futures?

The stock-index wars are heating up: Standard & Poor’s completed its S&P
Global 1200 Index with the release of its UK 150 Index on October 5.

The past few months have seen more signs that Asian indexes and index funds
are becoming more important to investors in the Asia-Pacific region.

The author draws on his portfolio management experience and passes along his thoughts on
approaches to the problem of managing large-scale equity diversification.

n index has been introduced for the Prague, Budapest and Warsaw exchanges by
Czech brokerage firm Wood & Co., in conjunction with Reuters Group PLC.