John Jacobs, CEO of NASDAQ Financial Products said, " The EQQQ provides European investors with low cost access to the entire range of companies in the NASDAQ-100 Index in European hours, on a European market. Because the NASDAQ-100 Index has such a diverse group of underlying stocks, investors can instantly broaden their portfolio mix with companies that represent a wide variety of sectors including, computer hardware and software, media, retail, life science and biotechnology. Some of the world's most visionary companies are amongst those included in the NASDAQ-100 Index, including Microsoft, Dell, Starbucks, Cisco, Oracle, Intel and Amazon.com
Jacobs added, "Today's listing in Italy further expands the reach of NASDAQ's investment products in Europe, following the launch of EQQQ in UK, Germany and Belgium in 2002. NASDAQ believes there is a great future for ETFs in the European capital marketplace, which has accounted for the majority of new product launches in 2002 and 2003."
In addition to providing a diversified investment for private investors, EQQQ can be used in a variety of different portfolio strategies by institutions, including:
- Rapid equitising of cash inflows or asset allocation switches out of cash
- Buying and holding for long term investment
- Index-tracking core portfolio around which actively managed satellite investments can be positioned
- Implementing regional or sectoral policy changes
- Implementing diversified exposure to the international markets
- Shorting or leveraging index exposure within hedge strategies
- Trading on margin
