After more than three decades as the bond market’s biggest benchmark, though, the Agg could be too old and set in its ways to change, notes Jersey.
“I’m not sure if there’s any impetus for the indices to change,” Jersey says. “Some of them have been around for a very long time, and now there’s a lot of money managed against them. Not because they’re the perfect benchmarks, but because asset managers like Oppenheimer are expected to.”
Thus, the Barclay's Aggregate Bond Index continues as a Shakespearean fixed income benchmark of choice, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."