New index launches

The ETPs are issued by Leverage Shares and add to a list of more than 100 existing products. They include underlyings such as Taiwan Semiconductor and Moderna, and enable investors and traders to efficiently gain leveraged and short exposure to the target stock.

The STOXX Willis Towers Watson Climate Transition Indices (CTIs) are an innovative new family of indices designed to manage climate transition risk through a forward-looking, bottom-up analysis of the impact on company valuations from moving to a low-carbon economy. The indices help address risks and opportunities arising from climate transition in a transparent, systematic way and result in portfolios consistent with the Paris Agreement goals.

We talk to Abhishek Gupta, FlexShares’ Senior Quantitative Strategist, about the company’s new ETFs covering low volatility and high dividend strategies in emerging markets. The funds, which track STOXX indices, include Northern Trust Asset Management’s proprietary quality and ESG screens, as well as climate filters, aimed at helping improve risk-adjusted returns.

The iSTOXX APG World Responsible Investment Indices were designed to ‘layer in’ various sustainability filters in order to measure the effect on risk and returns of each individual ESG criteria on a developed-markets global equities portfolio. Hamish Seegopaul and Yurong Gu explain how the new indices came about and discuss the value of the collaboration with the Netherlands’ APG and with BlackRock.

Ronald van Dijk, Deputy CIO at APG Asset Management, discusses how the recently launched iSTOXX APG World Responsible Investment Indices help pension funds and other investors incorporate different layers of sustainability ambitions on portfolios in an innovative, flexible and transparent way.

Chris Huemmer, Northern Trust Asset Management’s Senior Investment Strategist, discusses his firm’s innovative ETFs tracking multi-factor, ESG and climate strategies, and the role of an index provider in wrapping up a holistic investment approach.

The STOXX SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) indices are part of Qontigo’s index-based sustainability solutions framework, which grew this year to address investors’ varied ESG needs and ambitions. The SRI indices seek to improve the ESG profile of the portfolio and lower its carbon emissions.

As a new batch of ETPs tracking STOXX single-stock short and leveraged indices is listed on the London Stock Exchange and Euronext, we talk to Oktay Kavrak from issuer Leverage Shares to find out how the products work and how investors are using them.

The offering breaks fresh ground in indexing and brings a smart and robust strategy to enhance structured products at a time when the implied dividends market has challenged the industry. The indices, which have been exclusively licensed to Citi, enable the structured-product issuer to remove any single-name dividend risk from their books and deliver more attractive product terms to clients and end investors.

In this post, we explore the second category in Qontigo’s index-based sustainability solutions: our ‘Enhance’ ESG offering. The category is made up of STOXX and DAX indices that aim to maximize the sustainability profile of portfolios, given investors’ needs to balance risk, return and ESG integration.

We look at the STOXX index families that make up the first category in Qontigo’s index-based sustainability solutions. Our ‘Exclude’ category – consisting of the STOXX ESG-X, ESG Broad Market and ESG blue-chip indices – helps investors incorporate a varied degree of responsible engagement and risk mitigation into portfolios.

The new futures track 12 STOXX® Industry Neutral Ax Factor Indices covering the European and US markets, which employ an optimized methodology to control factor exposures, diversification and tradability. Zubin Ramdarshan from Eurex and Qontigo’s Hamish Seegopaul explain why the futures offer a unique vehicle for market participants seeking factor-based strategies.