Blog Posts

A new Qontigo article revisits the concept of tracking error, a metric that’s gaining even more attention amid the growth of sustainable portfolios. Hamish Seegopaul, Global Head for Index Product Innovation at Qontigo, addresses some key questions, including: How should the various degrees of tracking error be interpreted? Does the metric tell us much in terms of the future? And can we control this?

Risk and volatility should not always be perceived as negative. According to Melissa Brown, Head of Applied Research at Qontigo, increased volatility often brings about opportunities.

Investors are right to focus on the US debt ceiling showdown these days, instead of key upcoming economic releases including the May jobs report. While a US default would unleash global economic Armageddon, markets have been relatively calm so far.

The fight to preserve our nature’s systems is intensifying, presenting both additional risks and opportunities for investors. Qontigo’s ISS STOXX Biodiversity indices offer a multi-step framework to address biodiversity challenges while employing state-of-the-art datasets.

The goals of the Paris Agreement depend inexorably on the decarbonization of the transport sector and, therefore, on the widespread adoption of electric cars. Investors can join the clean transportation megatrend through targeted thematic strategies.

After two years of rallying, energy stocks have experienced a turn in fortunes in 2023 as commodity prices continue to slide. Nevertheless, the STOXX Europe 600 Oil & Gas index has retained some attributes, such as positive active exposures to the Earnings Yield and Value factors.

Is the US heading towards another debt-ceiling crisis? Using Qontigo’s Axioma Risk tools, we take the 2011 precedent and run a series of stress tests to analyze how negatively investment portfolios could react this time.

Our Sustainable Investments team has produced a document detailing the methodology for reporting the sustainable investment percentage of STOXX and DAX indices. The rules are aligned with the spirit of the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and are designed, among other things, to bring specificity and flexibility when constructing sustainable portfolios.

As the luxury goods industry experiences a post-pandemic boom and its companies become some of the largest in the world, a new thematic index and ETF offer investors an opportunity to track this business segment in a targeted way that would not be possible through a traditional sector strategy. The Kodex European Luxury Top 10 ETF was listed in Korea on Apr. 25 and tracks the STOXX Europe Luxury 10 index.

The STOXX Global 1800 index rose 1.8% in dollars in April, and the STOXX World AC added 1.5%, following better-than-expected economic and business reports. There were gains across all regions, and Low Risk was the leading factor in the month.

EconSight’s sophisticated patent classification system helps determine which companies are likely to lead in future technological markets. The company’s indicators and deep know-how is employed in the stock selection process of the STOXX Global Metaverse index.

The ROOF portfolios use the sector ROOF Scores to construct sentiment-tracking portfolios that capture the returns from a bullish or bearish strategy. The Risk-On and Risk-Off portfolios are constructed from the holdings of the STOXX® Europe 600 index and are rebalanced monthly (at month-end) using the then-current sector ROOF scores for the European market.