Blog posts

Futures on the two European blue-chip indices are now listed on B3, the Brazilian stock exchange, giving local investors direct access to the European market without leaving their home market framework.

The idDAX 50 ESG NR Decrement 4.0% can be used to underlie structured products offering exposure to sustainability leaders in the German equity market. The decrement mechanism allows issuers to improve the coupon or capital-protection terms offered to clients.

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.

How can investors push companies to have a more positive societal impact from their products and operations? And how can that impact be measured? Responsible Investor and Qontigo host a panel of experts who discuss these topics and more.

Variety in ESG data can enrich investment strategies and provide an edge in performance. Qontigo’s open-architecture approach is to find and leverage the most robust sustainability information available, with no limitation to any single provider, for each investing case.

On November 26, the STOXX Global 1800 Index fell the most since September 2020 after South Africa reported the existence of a new variant of the COVID-19 virus that may have a higher infection risk than previous types. Value and Travel & Leisure stocks led the retreat during the month.

Rebecca Chesworth, Senior Equities Strategist at State Street Global Advisors SPDR ETFs; and Hamish Seegopaul, Head of R&D for ESG and Quantitative Indices at Qontigo, discuss the change in underlying index for the SPDR® STOXX Europe 600 ESG Screened UCITS ETF and how clients’ ESG needs are shaping the product offering.

Sustainable investing strategies vary. Some investors, for example, simply want to improve ESG alignment. Others seek to maximize their impact on society, by investing in those companies that contribute the most to certain goals. While the metrics that underlie these approaches have some overlap, there is not perfect correlation, in terms of how metrics are defined, how portfolios are constructed, what is being targeted, etc.

Using the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework for an impact-measurement approach can help understand and quantify companies’ real-world impact, a new whitepaper from Qontigo and Clarity AI argues. Such an approach enables investors to bridge an important gap at a time when impact has emerged as a key investment pillar, right next to risk and returns.

A panel at COP26 comprised of sustainability and index experts, including members of Willis Towers Watson and Qontigo, explains how the STOXX Willis Towers Watson Climate Transition Indices (CTIs) help investors manage climate-transition risk and align their investments for the economic transition to net zero.

One of the panels at the Sustainability & Impact Investor Forum in Monaco last month drew from the perspectives of active fund management, asset-owner and indexing specialists, who discussed the key drivers and approaches to incorporate the transition to net zero into investment portfolios.

In the fifth anniversary of the launch of the first thematic ETFs resulting from the collaboration between BlackRock and Qontigo, we reflect on the performance of seven strategies covered in this partnership: Automation & Robotics, Ageing Population, Digitalization, Electric Vehicles, Digital Security, Healthcare Innovation and Smart City Infrastructure.