international equity market benchma

international equity market benchmarks
as a benchmark of activity or performance of a given national equity market, an index of the stocks traded on the secondary exchange (or exchanges) of a country is used. Several national equity indexes are available for use by investor
to this point, the exhibits of this chapter have presented data from stock market indexes prepared by S&P. Each year S&P publishes its Emerging Stock Markets Factbook, which provides a variety pf stastical data on both emerging and developed country stock markets. the Factbook is an excellent source that is carried by many university libraries and provides annual comparative stastics in an easy-to-read format
The indexes prepared and published by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI)are an excellent source of national stock market performance. through its monthly publication, MSCI Perspective, MSCI presents return and market capitalization data for 24 national stock market indexes from developed countries. In constructing each of these indexes, an attempt is made to include equity issues representing at least 60 percent of the market capitalization of each industry within the country. the stocks in each country index are market-value-weighted, that is, the proportion of the index a stock represents is determined by its proportion of total market capitalization of all stocks in the index. additionally, MSCI publishes a market-value-weighted World Index comprising 23 of its country indexes. The World Index includes approximately 2600 stock issues of major corporations in the world. MSCI also publishes several regional indexes: the European, Australia, Far East(EAFE) Index comprising approximately 1000 stocks from 21 countries. the North American Index composed of the United States and Canada; the Far East Index(3 countries); several Europe Indexes (depending upon whether individual constituent contries are included); the Nordic Contries Indexes (4 countries); and the Pacific Index (5 countries). the EAFE Index is widely followed and it is representative of World Index excluding North American stock market performance. daily values of several of the MSCI country indexes and the World Index can be found in The Wall Street Journal. MSCI also publishes dozens of industry indexes, each of which includes equity issues from the respective industry from the countries it follows
MSCI also publishes 26 national emerging stock market indexes for developing countries covering approximately 1700 secutrties. additionally, msci publishes several regional emerging markets indexes. the emerging markets free version of these indexes recognizes that some countries impose ownership restrictions on stocks by foreigners. In the case, the constituent national indexes are excluded or underweighted to recognize the particular restriction in order to provide an index representative of investments that can be freely made
the DJ providses stock market index values for a number of countries. the values and percentage changes of these indexes can be found daily in The Wall Street Journal. the data are presented in local currency terms and for comparative purposes in US dollars. Exhibit 8.8 presents an example of the daily report of these indexes as found in The Wall Street Journal
in addition to their own DJ country stock market indexes, The Wall Street Journal also reports values and percentage changes in local currency values of the major stock market indexes of the national exchanges or markets from various countries in the world. many of these indexes are prepared by the stock markets themselves or well-known investment advisory firms.