News & Research

The last two years have been among the most eventful in the blue-chip DAX® index’s three-decade life. Qontigo, which manages the German benchmark and its entire family of indices, has since 2020 pursued DAX’s biggest overhaul since its inception. The aim has been to bolster the quality of constituent companies, bring selection criteria in line with international standards and improve representativeness.

Technological advancements are at the core of many disruptive economic trends harnessed by the STOXX Thematic indices. We look at seven of the strategies — from automation to electric vehicles and smart city infrastructure — designed to track the companies shaping our digital future.

We look into the economic risks of employing factor-style strategies such as those in the STOXX Factor Indices, by screening them through Axioma’s Macroeconomic Projection model. The findings show that some styles have more economic exposure than others, and that macro variables can be correlated with industry, country and style factors, to different degrees.

The FAANGs — Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (i.e., Alphabet) — are having an annus horribilis. But they still have gains to show for the past three years, and, importantly for investors, the group’s influence on the US market has only decreased so much.

The STOXX Global 1800 index rose 7.1% in dollars last month, after falling to a two-year low. While most economists rightly forecast the Federal Reserve’s fourth consecutive hike of 75 basis points on Nov. 2, speculation grew during October that the central bank could indicate it would slow the pace of monetary tightening.

The customized index is an optimized solution that balances multiple investment objectives and uses various inputs, including LGIM’s proprietary ESG data.

Qontigo has licensed the newly launched iSTOXX World Min Vol ESG Index to Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM). The index will be used for a large pension fund mandate. This index is based on STOXX’s broadest equity universe, the STOXX World AC (All Countries), including both Developed and Emerging Markets and incorporates both proprietary ESG data provided by LGIM and data from ISS ESG.

The STOXX® Global 1800 index rebounded from a two-year low last month on investors’ expectations that the Federal Reserve may soon slow down the pace of interest-rate hikes.

Dutch pension fund manager APG, which co-designed the responsible-investment indices with Qontigo, has received an award from Pensioen Pro for its pioneering work following the introduction of the indices.

ESG funds can target very different objectives and their names mean very different things. So, what, in reality, are their overall achievements when it comes to broad sustainability metrics? What active risk are investors taking on to accomplish them? And can optimization help balance sustainability and risk? A new whitepaper from Qontigo examines these matters.

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.

Qontigo noted in a research report that as of August, 346B euros were invested in passive ESG ETFs listed across the world. Of that figure, 53% went towards general ESG funds, while 45% of the flows were allocated towards environmental ETFs.