After market close on March 17, S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI Inc. will implement changes to the GICS structure that will involve reclassifying firms across five of the GICS sectors. To learn more about these changes, read our blog, “2023 GICS Changes: Companies Impacted and What You Need to Know.”
And for a deeper dive into the changes and the SPDR Sector and Industry ETFs that will be affected, read our GICS Structure Changes FAQs.
Sector ETFs are a powerful tool for investors, offering a straightforward way to incorporate simple or sophisticated sector strategies with precision and transparency. And with $685B in AUM,1 it’s clear that equity sector ETFs are more than just a trend.
Powerful Portfolio Construction Tools
Sectors divide the economy into groups of companies that operate similar businesses or provide related products and services. Creating these segments enables in-depth analysis of market dynamics to see which parts of the economy are flourishing — or lagging — in order to find pockets of potential out performance.
Sector investments provide targeted exposure to these economic segments, giving you a wide variety of options to enhance the core of your equity portfolio and adapt to changing market cycles with agility and precision.
Using sector-based investment strategies can help you align and adjust your portfolios based on macroeconomic or thematic trends, like clean energy and declining interest rates, changing stock fundamentals, or shifts in technical indicators, like momentum.
Sector strategies can help you:
Read more about each of these investment cases in Four Reasons to Implement a Sector Strategy.
Ready to evaluate a sector or industry allocation? Use these resources to guide your decision making.
Sector & Industry Dashboard
Spotting Sector and Industry Trends
When you’re ready to implement a sector strategy, you can consider carving out a portion of your US equity exposure for sectors. Then, choose your sectors based on these types of analysis:
Top-Down
Analyze business cycles to rotate towards sectors that could potentially benefit more from the current economic phase.
Thematic
Survey macroeconomic data (oil, inflation, rates) to position according to changes in certain macroeconomic variables. Identify cyclical or secular industry trends to harness the growth potential within a particular segment of the economy.
Bottom-Up
Use aggregated company-level data to identify sectors with attractive fundamental characteristics, such as cheaper valuations and/or stronger earnings sentiment.
Technical
Evaluate recent performance to overweight/underweight sectors with strong price momentum.
Investing in sector ETFs can be an efficient way to implement sophisticated strategies with precision and transparency.
ETFs can offer:
Full Service
Let our Investment Solutions Group (ISG) do the work. The SPDR® SSGA US Sector Rotation ETF (XLSR), combines tactical overweights and underweights of S&P 500 sector ETFs based on ISG’s sector return forecasts and research, which includes a proprietary, quantitative sector selection model.
State Street Global Advisors launched the world’s first suite of sector ETFs in 1998, and continues to expand on that heritage to help investors precisely meet their desired sector exposures.
World’s largest sector ETF provider 3
Average trading volume than the next-largest competitor 4
Managing sector ETFs