Equal Weight: A common-sense approach

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Rethinking equity exposure in concentrated markets

The events of recent years have brought renewed attention to the concentration embedded in major equity indices. Despite strong market gains, a relatively small group of mega-cap US technology stocks continues to drive a large portion of index performance, raising questions about the balance of traditional market-cap weighted approaches.

This environment has encouraged investors to look for ways to diversify their equity exposure more deliberately. Equal Weight strategies offer a clear and intuitive solution. By giving each constituent an equal weight at every rebalance they distribute risk more evenly and allow a broader set of companies to influence performance. Invesco’s Equal Weight UCITS ETFs offer access to this approach across both global, US and European markets.

Why Equal Weight deserves attention

Unlike market-cap indices, which naturally concentrate exposure in the largest companies, Equal Weight strategies assign the same weight to each constituent. A quarterly rebalance then maintains this balance by preventing positions from drifting too far from their intended allocation. This structure brings several meaningful advantages:

• Reduced concentration risk: Equal allocation prevents a small group of stocks from dictating overall performance, helping investors avoid the vulnerabilities created by narrow leadership.
• More genuine diversification: Spreading exposure more evenly across sectors, countries, and company sizes allows the portfolio to capture a wider exposure to the long-term growth in equity markets.
• A disciplined process: The rebalance process effectively locks in gains from names that may have run ahead and reallocates any gains to the laggards of the past quarter. This systematic “sell high, buy low” dynamic can help investors maintain valuation discipline through different market cycles.
• An uplift in mid- and small-cap representation: Equal Weighting naturally increases exposure to mid-sized and smaller companies—areas that can offer distinct growth profiles but are often overshadowed in traditional indices.

A global illustration: balancing the MSCI World

The contrast between the standard MSCI World Index and its Equal Weighted counterpart captures the impact of the methodology. While the market-cap weighted version has almost three quarters1 of its weight in the US, largely concentrated in a small cohort of dominant tech companies, the Equal Weighted Index spreads its exposure across all ~1,300 constituents.

This redistribution: 

• reduces US concentration to roughly 40%, 
• increases exposure to other developed markets such as Europe and Japan, 
• brings greater balance across sectors, and 
• incorporates meaningful mid- cap influence.

Taken together, the result is a more representative and resilient expression of global equity markets, one that reflects the breadth of the investable universe rather than the scale of its largest players.

A more balanced sector and country exposure

Extending the Equal Weight story in Europe

Europe presents its own case for a more balanced approach. We already offer investors broad regional exposure through the MSCI Europe Equal Weighted Index, which includes over 400 companies and provides a diversified lens on the region.

To build on this, Invesco has launched the first UCITS ETF tracking the EURO STOXX 50 Equal Weight Index. The traditional EURO STOXX 50 is a familiar benchmark, but its market-cap weighted version is dominated by a small number of large multinationals - the top 10 stocks alone account for more than 40% of the index. Equal Weighting tempers this concentration, giving each of the 50 constituents the same opportunity to contribute.

The effect is a more balanced reflection of Europe’s economic landscape, with a more even allocation to key sectors such as Industrials, Financials and Information Technology. For investors seeking a clearer, more diversified expression of the region’s equity markets, Equal Weighting offers a compelling alternative.