Transamerica Retirement Services’
Stash & Dash allows players to collect coins representing different ways of
earning income. They then must be deposited along the way to earn interest.
The goal of the game is to collect
as many coins as possible. But the money trolls can take some of those coins
away.
Those trolls represent unexpected
expenses like having
to pay a parking ticket or buy a new cell phone, said David Shute, vice
president of marketing for Transamerica Retirement Services.
The game consists of three segments
of retirement in 15-year increments. More trolls challenge users as the game
progresses, just as people saving for retirement face more challenges as they
age, Shute
said.
Players can invite friends to try
and beat their scores. They can also post their scores on their Facebook wall.
Ultimately,
Shute said, he hopes users take away the importance of saving for retirement. “We’re not trying to be FarmVille,” he told PLANADVISER,
referring to the popular Facebook game. “We’re
trying to create awareness on the topic.”
The free game is available here or through the Apple iTunes store.
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U.S. Large Caps Flex Muscle in Russell Index Rebalancing
Russell
Investments released its newly reconstituted Global Indexes following its annual
index reconstitution late last week, benchmarking about $3.9 trillion in assets.
Global market capitalization showed a notable decline, sliding to $44.2
trillion on May 31, from $52.2 trillion the same period a year ago, while U.S. large-cap stocks, led by the tech sector, had a strong
performance in the Russell 3000, slipping to $15.8 trillion from $16.7 trillion
during this same period.
“The
strong performance of the global markets in the first quarter of 2012, led by
large-cap stocks in the U.S., showed in the all-time high of the Russell 1000
Index on April 2,” said Stephen Wood, chief market strategist for North America
at Russell Investments. “However, international turmoil over the last few
months has contributed to a decline in the global equity market and a resulting
drop in market capitalization of the Russell global index family, as shown
during the annual rebalancing process.”
ExxonMobil
dropped from first to second position among U.S. stocks in the Russell 1000
Index at reconstitution, exhibiting a significant shift from growth to
value. Overall, the Russell U.S. indexes reflect a market shift over the
past year to higher returns in growth stocks. Apple Inc. took position as
the largest stock in the Russell 1000 ($540.2 billion), with a 68%
capitalization increase since May 31, 2011.
At
17.1%, technology became the largest sector in the Russell 1000 Index at
rebalance, overtaking financial services at 16.7%. This was in part because
of the inclusion of Facebook—the largest addition to the Russell indexes globally—to the technology
sector of the Russell 1000 Index.
Tech
also led U.S. small caps in the biggest increase year-over-year, as 37 technology
companies joined the Russell 2000 Index. Financial services continues to
be the largest sector in this index, even though 17 financial services stocks
graduated to the U.S. large-cap Russell 1000.
Malaysia,
China and Hong Kong showed the largest percentage increase in country weight
within the Russell Global Index since last year’s reconstitution. China remains
the world’s third-largest country in total market capitalization, behind the
U.S. and Japan. And emerging markets declined materially against developed
markets over the past year, decreasing their Russell Global Index weighting,
from 14.7%, to 13.7%.
Since
last year’s rebalance, there has been a notable decrease in equity correlations
across global markets, as demonstrated by the Russell global index
family. After the 2011 reconstitution, the rolling monthly trading
correlation between the U.S. large-cap Russell 1000 Index and the Russell
Developed Europe Index was at a high of 0.92, which dropped to 0.66 as of May
31, 2012. The shift in correlation between the Russell Developed Europe
Index and the Russell Asia-Pacific Index has been even more dramatic, falling
from 0.55 just after last year’s reconstitution to as low as -0.18 in recent
weeks.
Russell’s index reconstitution process this year was
marked by a relatively low turnover rate in underlying constituents, which
Russell Indexes attributes to ongoing fine-tuning of the reconstitution
methodology.
And to complete this year’s reconstitution, the “Closing
Cross,” NASDAQ’s trading mechanism that simultaneously brings together the buy
and sell interests for investors in specific NASDAQ, NYSE and NYSE Amex stocks
to execute all shares for each stock at a single price, was successfully
executed on the NASDAQ exchange on Friday afternoon just before the U.S. market
close. According to NASDAQ, in 1.15 seconds, the NASDAQ Closing Cross
executed approximately 687.9 million shares representing $9.5 billion across
2,195 NASDAQ-listed stocks.
“Throughout
its nearly 30-year history of index construction, Russell has drawn on its
unique insight into global capital markets and multi-asset portfolio
construction and implementation to design benchmarks offering exposure to the
true performance of different segments and asset classes of the market,” said
Rolf Agather, global head of index research and innovation at Russell. “The
annual reconstitution helps ensure that our indexes truly reflect the current
state of the global markets.”
Final membership lists for the Russell Global, Russell
3000, Russell 1000, Russell 2000, Russell Midcap and Russell Microcap Indexes,
accounting for approximately $3.9 trillion in assets benchmarked, were
confirmed after Friday’s market close.