News & Research

In this Perspectives report, we weigh the military sales exposures of a European defense portfolio, and examine its alignment with current sustainability regulations.

In this Perspectives report, we look at alternative indicators that can diagnose a company’s position toward certain processes that regulate Earth’s systems. We then run the STOXX® Europe 600 index through some of those metrics to better understand the standing of European companies on such aspects.

An ISS ESG net-zero scenario alignment assessment shows the STOXX Global Artificial Intelligence index largely overshoots the IEA’s carbon emissions budget by 2050. Yet, that is not far from the case for the broader equities market, and technology advancements may help change the situation in coming years.

New regulation and industry efforts point to sources of portfolio risk — particularly of the Social ESG type — for both developers and deployers of AI systems. As the technology advances quickly, governments and companies are stepping up efforts to ensure it is not prone to misuse and abuse.

As the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) tightens guidelines on fund names to mitigate greenwashing risks, fund managers face new challenges. In our latest report, we explore the implications of ESMA’s new rules on the use of terms like “ESG” and “sustainable” in fund names, and how these changes may impact both investment strategies and marketing practices.

As biodiversity garners increased attention and data availability expands, understanding its effect on portfolios becomes paramount. In our first edition of Perspectives, we spotlight how ISS ESG’s innovative methodologies can help assess a portfolio’s impact and natural capital dependencies.

Transaction costs play a crucial role for any investor considering adopting sustainable principles in their investments. This study from ISS LiquidMetrix and STOXX investigates the costs, and cost efficiencies, of shifting a benchmark portfolio of European equities to climate-transition versions.

Biodiversity is vital for our planet and society. With the emergence of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, investors are gaining a better understanding of biodiversity-linked risks and opportunities in their portfolios. This paper begins by exploring the current metrics available for assessing the biodiversity footprints of companies. It then describes the ISS STOXX framework for building biodiversity indices, based on three fundamental steps: “Avoid,” “Minimize,” and “Enable.”

This article provides a high-level refresher of what tracking error means, and how we can embed it directly into portfolio construction.

In this paper, our goal is to show how sustainability ETF exposures to a number of sustainability-related factors may vary. It is eminently clear to us that investors with a view about key sustainability features cannot rely on the fund name, but instead need to do more digging into whether their fund meets the required criteria.

Real estate has long had the reputation of being at least a partial hedge against inflation, since both rental income and property values typically respond positively to inflationary pressures. The iSTOXX Developed and Emerging Markets ex USA PK VN Index has lived up to this reputation historically and is continuing to do so in the current inflationary environment.

The STOXX WTW Climate Transition Indices are a new approach to managing climate risk that offer investors a systematic and transparent way to incorporate climate transition risk into their investment decisions.