Thought leadership

Axel Lomholt, Chief Product Officer for Indices & Benchmarks at Qontigo, explains how technology and data innovation are buoying thematic investing, and what it takes to be at the research frontline in thematic strategies.

A new whitepaper from Qontigo’s research team explores the benefits of constructing an exclusions portfolio with an optimizer, which helps limit active risk and frees up capital to allocate towards sustainability or performance objectives.

At a recent IPE webinar, experts from Qontigo and DWS discussed how investors can build a sustainable strategy considering their impact objectives, tracking error budgets and the need to comply with evolving regulation.

The modular STOXX World indices allow investors to flexibly build portfolios covering a broad and liquid universe of stocks, slicing and dicing the world’s equity markets along regions, countries, market capitalization and sectors.

Since late 2021, the STOXX Emerging Markets 1500 index has shown lower forecast and realized volatility than the STOXX Global 1800, a benchmark for developed economies. Using Axioma’s Factor Risk Models, a new whitepaper from Qontigo’s Applied Research team investigates the drivers of this anomaly.

Throughout 2022 and into 2023, the EM gauge has shown lower forecast and realized volatility than the global DM benchmark. A new whitepaper investigates the drivers of this anomaly.

The recently launched STOXX Global Metaverse Index uses a sophisticated methodology to screen those companies with the most relevant patents in technologies associated with the Metaverse. This allows investors to target innovators whose products and services are likely to be leading the transition to the virtual world in the coming years. A new Qontigo whitepaper explores the index in detail.

Qontigo has introduced the STOXX® World indices, a modular suite that allows investors to flexibly build portfolios covering a broad and liquid universe of markets.

At an IPE webinar last month, experts from WTW and Qontigo explained how the STOXX Willis Towers Watson Climate Transition Indices (CTIs) can help investors manage climate transition risk on a forward-looking basis. The audience also heard how this can be achieved without increasing a portfolio’s overall risk.

SFDR Level 2 standards come into effect in 2023. Antonio Celeste and Saumya Mehrotra from Qontigo’s Sustainability Product Management team look into the concept of ‘Sustainable Investment’ and discuss how to measure and approach such investments.

Following a push from local authorities and significant evolution in ESG data disclosure, investors can now access reliable corporate information and invest in Chinese companies leading in sustainability.

This month’s UN COP15 biodiversity summit will accelerate the discussion around nature loss and advance the notion that mismanagement of investment portfolios’ biodiversity impact entails risks. On a positive note, innovation in datasets now allow the integration of biodiversity metrics in investment strategies and indices, opening the possibility of similar progress in this field as has occurred in recent years with climate action.