Blog posts

The STOXX Global 1800 index added 7.1% in dollars last month, matching its performance in October. The benchmark has still lost 14.5% in 2022, poised for its worst year since 2008.

Qontigo has been busy in the past two years enhancing the DAX rulebook, to bolster the quality of constituent companies, bring selection criteria in line with international standards and improve representativeness of the underlying markets. Serkan Batir, Qontigo’s Managing Director for Indices, says the overhaul helps ensure the benchmark is fit for purpose in an evolving financial landscape.

The first collaboration between Postal Savings Bank of China and Qontigo will allow the lender’s clients to access a portfolio of large Chinese equities chosen for their sustainability scores and optimized to limit deviations from the benchmark in terms of risk and industry allocation.

In the race to net-zero and the era of sustainable investing, indices can have a bigger role than just channeling capital to specific goals. At Qontigo we believe we must engage with index constituents to encourage best practices in climate alignment and explain the impact that climate-related metrics can have on index composition.

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.

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.

This article aims to provide an update on the responsible-investing characteristics of the iSTOXX APG World Responsible Indices, and reaffirm that the process continues to create indices with substantial improvement in sustainability criteria without straying too much from the parent benchmark.