Whitepapers

This report delves into the STOXX® Digital Asset Blue Chip Index’s construction process to unpick the crypto-native metrics used in asset selection. It also provides an analysis of what the index offers in terms of risk and returns and its prowess as a barometer of the underlying market.

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.

In this paper, we use the transparency afforded by ETFs to analyze investor flows, but also look through to the underlying holdings, to understand the time-varying preferences of passive investors. We have found that year on year, there is a great deal of variability in style, industry and regional exposures. However, these exposure preferences tend to be neutral over longer time frames. This is in contrast to a consistent preference for performance, reflected by flows going towards ETFs with strong in-year returns.

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.

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.

In this paper, we explore the rationale and methodology behind the construction of the index. We start by explaining the concept of megatrends and how they can be captured through thematic indexing, using a multifaceted approach. We look as well at the index performance before concluding with an outlook on the opportunities for the Metaverse in the years to come.

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.

The recent launch of the STOXX U.S. Equity Factor Index, which underlies the iShares U.S. Equity Factor ETF (LRGF), highlights the real-world performance benefits of a factor-based approach that seeks to manage risk relative to a capitalization-weighted benchmark.

The STOXX Global Digital Entertainment and Education Index captures the global digital transformation of entertainment and education – a long-term structural change. The individual characteristics of the stocks in this index are what set it apart: the Specific Return factor made the largest positive contribution to the seven-year return of all the indices in the study.

Term spreads have risen in multiple regions around the globe, as long-term sovereign yields soared amid rising (expected and actual) inflation but central banks took longer to raise short-term interest rates. The impact of this on international real estate has mostly been positive over the past two-and-a-half years.