Russell Investments announced today the launch of the new Russell Global 3000™ Index series of 18 indexes — all sub-components of the comprehensive Russell Global Index — for investors who seek enhanced tradability features for investment vehicles. The new series, which extends Russell’s trademark U.S. market index naming method for the first time globally, features the Russell Global 1000™ Index and Russell Global 2000™ Index, as well as the Russell Global ex-US variants and growth and value sub-component indexes.
Based on three decades of experience in innovative index design, which today accounts for $3.9 trillion in benchmarked assets, the new series uses the same global-relative methodology as the Russell Global Index. The new series also provides investors with exposure to the Russell Global investable universe through more liquid equity indexes with enhanced investability.
“The Russell Global Index comprehensively represents the investable global opportunity set,” said Scott Stark, Director of Russell Indexes Europe. “The Russell Global 1-2-3 series optimizes that broad universe to produce a smaller basket of stocks designed for passive investment while still closely tracking the Russell Global Index. Our widely-used benchmark products, which are broad, deep and descriptive of the investable market opportunity, now have a complementary series that offers the option of highly liquid indexes with reduced membership.”
In order to offer optimized global exposure in convenient, smaller baskets, the Russell Global 1000 and Russell Global 2000 Indexes are comprised of a smaller number of large-cap and small-cap stocks, in order to represent the respective global investable market capitalization tiers. The 2,000 global small-cap stocks in the Russell Global 2000 Index are the largest members of the comprehensive Russell Global Small Cap Index, which comprises more than 7,000 securities. Similar to the pattern for the U.S. benchmarks, the Russell Global 1000 Index and the Russell Global 2000 Index equal the Russell Global 3000 Index. The clear, objective methodology is posted on the corporate website, here, beginning on page 43: http://www.russell.com/indexes/documents/Global_Indexes_Methodology.pdf.
“Active institutional managers can rely upon the Russell Global Index to capture 98% of the investable universe; however investors today also seek global indexes for more varied goals. The Russell Global 1000, Russell Global 2000 and Russell Global 3000 Indexes offer a liquid solution — on a global scale — for investors who seek index performance or use index baskets for asset allocation,” said Stark. “These new indexes are ideal as the basis for investable products.”
Like the entire Russell Index family, the new Russell Global 3000 Index series reflects market segments in an efficient and objective manner. Similarly, the new series is constructed with transparent rules and reconstituted annually to accurately reflect changes in global equity markets.
Daily returns for the Russell Global 1000, Russell Global 2000, and Russell Global 3000 Indexes are available at http://www.russell.com/indexes/data/Global_Equity/russell_global_returns.asp.
