News & Research

STOXX Factor Indices are designed for investors who want to reap factor premia while avoiding the noise that pervades many other such products that allow undesired exposures.

The DAX® 50 ESG Index is the flagship index for sustainable equity investments in Germany and the most recent addition to the DAX® index offerings. The DAX® 50 ESG tracks the performance of a diversified portfolio of 50 largest, most liquid eligible German market stocks screened for Global Standards Screening, involvement in controversial weapons, tobacco, thermal coal, nuclear power and military contracting.

Following on from the successful derivatives launches in 2019, STOXX Ltd. (now part of Qontigo) has recently licensed the STOXX® USA 500 ESG-X Index as an underlying for listed futures on Eurex.

The STOXX Factor Index suite is comprised of five single-factor indices and a multifactor index engineered to deliver the excess returns associated with each factor using a diversified index of securities with carefully managed exposure, liquidity and risk characteristics.

STOXX is synonymous with equity indexing in Europe. The EURO STOXX 50® Index, EURO STOXX® Index and STOXX® Europe 600 Index have for over 20 years provided liquid and effective access to the region’s stock market, based on transparent rules and an objective methodology.

Earlier this year, STOXX introduced the EURO STOXX 50® ESG Index, a ESG version of the iconic EURO STOXX 50® that follows standard responsible investment exclusions and integrates companies’ ESG scores into stock selection.

The term “megatrend” was coined by US political scientist and author John Naisbitt at the start of the 1980s. It refers to powerful macroeconomic transformative forces that have a major impact on countries, businesses and societies around the world, disrupting the way products and services are produced, delivered and consumed.

Minimum variance strategies have gained significant traction especially since the global financial crisis. They aim at reducing or minimizing variance, i.e. the square of volatility as measured by standard deviation, or, in this case, price fluctuations of portfolio prices around their mean.

Ever since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, volatility has become a critical aspect for investors to consider, measure and position in their portfolios.

This paper examines the Index Effect and reports that it has weakened significantly since 2013. The Index Effect is the phenomenon where stocks added to an index experience positive excess returns in the days immediately before they are officially added to the index, while stocks that are removed from the index experience negative excess returns in the days immediately before they are officially removed.

Axioma and CS HOLT have collaborated to create a smart beta index — the Credit Suisse HOLT © Global Multi-Factor Portfolio — that united the stock selection prowess of CS HOLT with Axioma’s portfolio construction and risk model expertise. In this paper, we highlight three key principles that drove the process to create this portfolio.