Deutsche Börse added a new member to the DAXglobal® index family on Monday: DAXglobal Asia. It bundles the 40 largest and most liquid stocks from the Asian region (excluding Japan). The index constituents originate from China (30 percent), South Korea (19.2 percent), India (18.9 percent), Taiwan (8.4 percent), Indonesia (6.7 percent), Hong Kong (4.3 percent), Thailand (4.1 percent), Malaysia (3.2 percent), Singapore (2.8 percent) and Philippines (2.4 percent). The level of a country’s gross domestic product determines how many of its stocks are included in the index. Around one third of the index constituents are financial services providers, followed by the telecommunications sector (22 percent) and IT stocks (17 percent). On the whole, the index members currently originate from eight different sectors.
Hartmut Graf, Head of Issuer Data, said: “DAXglobal Asia will expand our index portfolio to include a new region and will enable investors to diversify their investments using a simple and liquid index product.” A reverse calculation returns an annual increase in the value of the index of 12 percent p.a. between 2001 and 2006. “The risk/return profile is more attractive than for comparable indices such as the S&P Asia 50 or MSCI Asia ex Japan”, adds Graf.
As with the existing indices in the DAXglobal family, the Asia index follows a strictly rule-based and transparent concept. The selection criteria are market capitalization and daily trading volume. The index composition is reviewed once a year.
ABN Amro will be issuing an index tracker on DAXglobal Asia as of 16 February. “We are pleased to be able to offer an index certificate on this benchmark index for what is currently the fastest-growing region in the world. The certificate selects stocks based on the weighting of the economic strength of the individual countries and therefore offers our customers real added value on the Asian market”, said Önder Ciftci, Head of the German Derivatives Business at ABN Amro.
