Index

Stocks rose in March, rebounding from losses in the month’s first half, as investors raised expectations the Federal Reserve may soon pause its interest rate hikes following the collapse of three lenders in the US.

Citigroup has expanded its suite of thematic structured products linked to STOXX indices that are adapted for participation products.

The Sustainable Development Investments Asset Owner Platform (SDI AOP) and Qontigo, its exclusive distribution partner, have announced the launch of the SDI Dashboard. The new tool allows investors to upload their investment portfolios and analyse them across a range of SDG-related parameters.

Our analysis shows how an optimized sustainability index can decrease active risk and free up more of the risk budget to be allocated to the desired sustainability metric(s), making the resulting portfolio a suitable replacement for a traditional benchmark.

At a recent IPE webinar, experts from Qontigo and DWS discussed how investors can build a sustainable strategy considering their impact objectives, tracking error budgets and the need to comply with evolving regulation.

A panel at the annual conference organized by the derivatives exchange, held last week, discussed the drivers behind the boom in thematic investing. As thematic ETFs continue to lure inflows, demand will also move on to listed derivatives, the experts said.

The collapse of a Californian bank triggered a rapidly-spreading banking crisis, with Europe suffering the brunt of it. European Banks, Financial Services firms and Insurers have fallen more than their US counterparts, while the risk of each one of those sectors in Europe has jumped.

The recent collapse of several banks has sparked fears of a 2011-style “doom loop,” in which losses in the financial sector spread to the wider economy. So far, contagion has been limited, but a further deterioration in credit quality could result in drawdowns across all sectors.

Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westphalia are heightening the responsible profile of state pension funds by adopting customized versions of STOXX Paris-aligned benchmark indices for their investments.

Qontigo has licensed the global STOXX ESG Länder PAB Index family to four German federal states. PAB (Paris-aligned Benchmark) stands for the most ambitious EU regulation regarding fossil exclusion criteria and greenhouse gas decarbonization for index providers.

Two panels at the SRP Europe Conference 2023 discussed the role of index design in building structured products for a changing market landscape. Topics covered include rising interest rates and volatility, and growing demand for sustainability and thematic investment strategies.