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Ana Harris

Ana Harris

Executive Director, MSCI Index Product

Ana Harris is MSCI’s head of global market-capitalization-weighted indexes, with responsibility for driving the segment’s visibility, positioning and growth. Before joining MSCI, she was global head of equity-index portfolio strategists at State Street Global Advisors. Previously, Ana was a research analyst at Russell Investments and a consultant at Towers Perrin, in Paris and London. She is a CFA® charterholder and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics and management from the Technical University of Lisbon.

Research and Insights

Articles by Ana Harris

    The Relationship Between Inflation and Commodities

    2 mins read Quick Take | Jul 15, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    While global inflation has accelerated over the last few months, the expectation for some countries is that inflation has peaked while others anticipate further increases.

    Emerging Markets: Sector and Industry Diversity

    2 mins read Quick Take | Jun 29, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    Industry and revenue lenses can provide additional insights to investors beyond a traditional sector analysis.

    US Inflation and Interest Rates: A Sectors’ Perspective

    3 mins read Quick Take | Jun 1, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    Inflation in the U.S. has accelerated over the last 18 months to a high of 8.5% in March (8.3% in April), a level that was last observed in the early 1970s.

    Energy-Sector Drivers

    3 mins read Quick Take | May 18, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    Looking at sectors through a factor lens may provide additional insights for investors in terms of explaining performance.

    Valuations Can Help in Evaluating Sectors

    2 mins read Quick Take | Apr 6, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    Along with other factors, comparing current sector valuations to longer-term averages has helped investors as they make decisions about whether to rotate in or out of specific sectors.

    Sector Momentum

    2 mins read Quick Take | Mar 11, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    Our research has shown that an industry momentum approach, which involves investing in industries with the best recent performance, outperformed broad-market equity indexes in developed-market regions from 2000 to 2021.

    Changing Sectors, Changing Correlations

    3 mins read Quick Take | Feb 16, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    When considering new sector exposures in their portfolios, investors can review correlations between existing and potential allocations to better understand whether these sectors’ returns moved in the same direction or if exhibited a differentiated return pattern. 

    Sector Leaderboard Changed as Inflation Picked Up

    2 mins read Quick Take | Feb 2, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    U.S. Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, has made it official: We can no longer label the period of current inflation as transitory. 

    Have Sectors Driven Stock Returns?

    2 mins read Quick Take | Jan 19, 2022 | Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris, Fotios Kassianidis

    When investors construct portfolios, they may do so based purely on bottom-up stock selection, or they may incorporate an element of top-down construction by adjusting the portfolio’s allocation to sectors, countries or factors.

    Ownership Structures in Emerging Markets

    3 mins read Quick Take | Dec 15, 2021 | Román Mendoza, Ana Harris

    Having a better understanding of the ownership structure of a firm and the various ownership control groups that may exist, can help international investors assess how loud their voices will be when the firm’s strategy and direction is being decided.

    Spotlight on the Markets: Are Supply Chains the New Grinch

    6 mins read Blog | Dec 3, 2021 | Ana Harris, Mehdi Alighanbari

    The holiday season may only exacerbate supply-chain challenges affecting the availability and prices of goods. In this inaugural edition of Spotlight on the Markets, we analyze performance and how investors are working to rise to the occasion.

    Bringing ESG and Climate Lenses to Latin America

    2 mins read Quick Take | Nov 17, 2021 | Román Mendoza, Ana Harris

    Although, on average, emerging-market (EM) companies have tended to have lower MSCI ESG Ratings than global peers, a more granular regional analysis can provide additional insights.

    A Closer Look at Sectors in Latin America

    2 mins read Quick Take | Nov 3, 2021 | Román Mendoza, Ana Harris

    The drivers of Latin America’s economies have significantly changed over the past two decades, as we can see clearly by looking at the sector composition of the Latin American stock market.  

    Did Home Bias Help?

    2 mins read Quick Take | Oct 27, 2021 | Anil Rao, Ana Harris

    Through time, many investors have shown a preference for their home markets. 

    A Closer Look at Latin America’s Performance

    2 mins read Quick Take | Oct 20, 2021 | Román Mendoza, Ana Harris

    In our previous post, we analyzed the performance of the MSCI EM Latin America Investable Market Index (IMI) relative to other emerging-market regions. Here, we investigate what drove this performance.

    Latin America: A Market with Unique Characteristics

    2 mins read Quick Take | Oct 4, 2021 | Román Mendoza, Ana Harris

    Latin American stock markets have recovered strongly as the world starts to overcome some of the COVID-19 pandemic’s challenges — renewing interest in the region.

    Does Small Size Mean Less Opportunity in a Low-Carbon World?

    2 mins read Quick Take | Sep 21, 2021 | Abhishek Gupta, Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris

    Small caps are usually thought of as having a greater carbon footprint relative to their larger counterparts. 

    ESG Credentials: How Have Small Caps Stacked Up?

    3 mins read Quick Take | Sep 8, 2021 | Abhishek Gupta, Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris

    As more investors incorporate ESG considerations into their investment decisions, some companies have changed their behavior, which has led to changes in their ESG profiles.

    How Have Small Caps Navigated Risk-On and Risk-Off Environments?

    3 mins read Quick Take | Aug 11, 2021 | Ashish Lodh, Abhishek Gupta, Ana Harris

    Market sentiment isn’t static, and we have seen that recently with the gradual reopening of the economy and its impact on the performance of small-cap companies.

    Bringing a Style Lens to Small Caps

    2 mins read Quick Take | Jul 28, 2021 | Abhishek Gupta, Ashish Lodh, Ana Harris

    Another way to deepen our understanding of small-cap stocks is to look at them through a style-factor lens. 

    Addressing the Lower Liquidity of Smaller Stocks

    3 mins read Quick Take | Jul 7, 2021 | Raina Oberoi, Ana Harris

    Despite the potential benefits of investing in small-cap stocks, investors often worry about liquidity, ease and ability to trade, at the lower end of the market-cap spectrum; specifically, costs and access.

    Were Small Caps Immune to Concentration?

    2 mins read Quick Take | Jun 9, 2021 | Raina Oberoi, Ana Harris

    A few weeks ago, we looked at the historical and current concentration of a range of regional indexes and noted there had been an increase in concentration across the globe. 

    Small Caps’ Revenue Exposure and the Global Recovery

    2 mins read Quick Take | May 26, 2021 | Raina Oberoi, Ana Harris

    The volume of world merchandise trade fell by 5.3% in 2020, while travel services were down by 63%, according to estimates by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Nonetheless, the WTO expects recovery from the pandemic’s effects to be swift, with regional differences, and world merchandise trade volume to increase by 8.0% in 2021. But even before the pandemic, global trade had shown signs of slowing, and the growth trend appeared to be flattening. There were several reasons, from increased...

    Diversifying with Small Caps

    2 mins read Quick Take | May 12, 2021 | Raina Oberoi, Ana Harris

    When investors are considering adding new types of investments to their portfolios, they examine not only the risk and return profiles of those new allocations, but also whether they might add diversification benefits.

    Risk and Volatility in Small Caps

    3 mins read Quick Take | Apr 28, 2021 | Raina Oberoi, Ana Harris

    We recently looked at small caps through the lens of historical performance during economic recovery. 

    Revisiting Small Caps

    2 mins read Quick Take | Apr 14, 2021 | Raina Oberoi, Ana Harris

    As the world economy starts to feel the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines, some investors have started to revisit the role of small-cap stocks in their portfolios.