Russell Investments has added 50 stocks in India to the Russell Global Index as part of an annual process to maintain the most accurate equity benchmarks. The Russell India Index now comprises 405 stocks that represent USD$937 billion in market capitalization. While India experienced a market capitalization decrease of 18.6% from this time last year, it was significantly better than the overall 34.7% decline for the global index. As a result, India ranks as the 10th largest market in the Russell Global Index.
"India's domestic economic growth rate continues to be among the best in the world, providing support to the local equity market," said Matt Beardsley, associate portfolio manager for Russell. "Foreign investors also continue to see opportunity in the Information Technology and Financials sectors that benefit from ongoing outsourcing and increased lending opportunities to Indian consumers respectively."
The Russell Global Index includes approximately 10,000 securities in 70 countries and covers 98% of the investable global market. Membership is determined by objective rules. All securities in the Russell Global Index are classified according to size, region, country, and sector, and as a result the index can be segmented into more than 300 distinct benchmarks.
Russell's annual index update process is followed closely by many investors because USD$4 trillion in assets are benchmarked against them. Russell Indexes also account for an industry-leading 63.3% of institutional benchmarked products. Accurate benchmarks are an integral part of Russell's ongoing process to monitor more than 8,000 investment manager products worldwide for its $136 billion active investment management business.
