By Richard Lightbound, CEO, EMEA, ROBO Global
The robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence sector—or RAAI—has been grabbing headlines as one of the most sought after investment opportunities of the decade. That opportunity has led to a flood of robotics-themed investment products hitting the market in the past 24 months. Navigating this expanding landscape can be a complex and time-consuming puzzle.
The challenge is by no means restricted to RAAI. Today, it seems there’s an index available to tackle nearly every theme and style an investor can dream up. In general, that’s good news. A larger menu means more choice, and the more options to choose from, the better. At the same time, understanding precisely what those options actually are can be a challenge—even for experienced investors and portfolio managers. While solution providers may be highly adept at defining and marketing a specific theme or investing style, it’s rare to find a prospectus that goes beyond the basics, such as how an index is constructed, how often it is rebalanced, the index turnover rate, performance history, and track record. But the finer details matter—especially if your goal is to utilize a product that tracks the index to bolster your core portfolio.
ROBO Global was the first to recognize the need to track robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence, and in 2013 became the first to launch an index to track the significant potential of the theme: the ROBO Global Robotics & Automation Index®. The index was built deliberately to be broad in scope and diversified across market cap, geography, and technologies to take advantage of the uniquely cyclical nature of pure-play and emerging pure-play technology providers. Our goal was to capitalize on the growth and contraction of each sector of the market over time. That strategy has delivered. Today, the ROBO Global Robotics & Automation Index has more than $2.5B in global assets under management, making it the largest dedicated robotics, automation, and AI index on the market today.
In the past four years, investors have become more sophisticated in their understanding of RAAI and its growth potential. In support of investor due diligence when researching and selecting a suitable strategy, ROBO Global has created a series of sub-indices to streamline the process of analyzing individual models and their ability to support specific investment goals.