how gics is used
all told more than 26 000 stocks worldwide have been classified by gics accounting for more than 95 of the world s listed market capitalization gics is used by portfolio managers to identify and analyze stocks and their competitors 2it also is used for benchmarking the msci indexes morgan stanley estimates that more than 14 5 trillion in assets under management are benchmarked to its msci indexes many of which are sector specific 3gics competes with the industry classification benchmark icb system which is maintained by dow jones and london s ftse group the largest difference between icb and gics lies in how consumer businesses are classified at the sector level with the icb companies doing business with consumers are divided into providers of goods and providers of services with the gics companies are labeled as cyclical or noncyclical or between discretionary spending and staples at the lower levels there are more differences but their impact is not hugely significant for example in the icb coal companies are found in basic materials but under the gics these companies are classified in energy whether one of the systems is superior is a matter of preference the end user does not really have a choice anyway as all of the major indexes associate their listed stocks with one or the other in practice most of the same sector and industry designations exist in both gics and icb standards 