For the latest ETF industry news, please refer to our “Asia ETF Roundup (Industry) – October 2020”.

Major Markets Performance

Investors have their eyes on the U.S. President Election. Meanwhile, news on COVID-19 reoccupied a lot of the month’s front pages. In particular, the U.S. and many parts of Europe posted highs on new cases, prompting the re-establishment of restrictions in some European countries. Global markets had a good first half in October before reversing course. The Morningstar Global Markets Index and the Morningstar US Market Index were down 2.2% respectively in October. By contrast, Chinese equity markets performed strongly (proxied by the Morningstar China Index in USD), posting a 5.6% gain for the month. This was driven mainly by the strong performance by some heavy-weight stocks reaching new highs, such as Alibaba (09988, +6.4%) and Tencent (00700, +15.5%). Performance of the emerging markets was mixed, with Indonesian equities recording a gain of 9.0% while Russian equities suffered a loss of 8.0% (proxied by their respective Morningstar indexes in US-dollar terms).