State Street has launched three publicly available data-driven indicators that will provide insight into the aggregate portfolio allocation trends of some of the world’s largest institutional investors.
The Institutional Investor Holdings Indicator, Institutional Investor Risk Appetite Indicator and the State Street S&P Global Institutional Investor Carbon Indicator, will draw on the aggregated and anonymised dataset, underlying the assets that State Street services.
Powered by S&P Global Sustainable1, the cluster of programmes will give investors, as well as other stakeholders, a fact-based alternative to unscientific polls and surveys as a means to gauge institutional investor sentiment.
The Institutional Investor Holdings Indicator will track the aggregate holdings of institutional investors across stocks, bonds and cash.
Shifts in asset allocations will convey information about how investors view the economy and their outlook for markets.
“When investors are bullish on markets, they tend to hold more stocks; when they are bearish, they tend to hold more cash and bonds,” says State Street. The Holdings Indicator is calculated daily and will be released monthly.
The Institutional Investor Risk Appetite Indicator will be based on flows — buying and selling activity — rather than portfolio positions. It will reveal whether investors in aggregate are buying or selling risky assets.
The Risk Appetite Indicator is also calculated daily and will be released monthly.
The State Street S&P Global Institutional Investor Carbon Indicator tracks the overall exposure of institutional investor portfolio holdings to carbon emissions.
Leveraging aggregated and anonymised custody and accounting data from State Street, it will release carbon emissions data.
In addition, the indicator will show how institutional investors are managing their exposure to carbon risk and what is driving shifts in these exposures. The Carbon Indicator will be released annually.
