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Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today announced the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity IndexSM has been licensed to INDEXCHANGE Investment AG to serve as the underlying for an exchange-traded fund (ETF). The Dow Jones – AIG Commodity SwapEX launched today on the XTF segment of Deutsche Börse.
“We have seen continued interest in our commodity indexes from market participants globally. The benefit of the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index is its superior methodology, diversification and commodity weighting. Growing numbers of investors are taking a closer look at commodities indexes because returns have historically been negatively correlated with stock and bond returns and positively correlated with inflation measures,” said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes. “Licensing the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index as the basis of an ETF allows market participants to add 19 commodity futures to their portfolios through one single measure.”
The Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index, a diversified and highly liquid benchmark for the commodities markets, is composed of futures contracts on physical commodities and was introduced in 1998. The 19 commodities currently in the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index are: aluminum, cattle, coffee, copper, corn, cotton, crude oil, gold, heating oil, hogs, natural gas, nickel, silver, soybeans, soybean oil, sugar, unleaded gas, wheat and zinc.
The index is designed to minimize concentration in any one commodity or sector. No one commodity can comprise less than 2% or more than 15% of the index, and no sector can represent more than 33% of the index as of the annual re-weightings of the index.
The weightings for each commodity included in the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index are calculated in accordance with rules that ensure that the relative pro-portion of each of the underlying individual commodities reflects its global economic significance and market liquidity. Annual rebalancing and re-weighting ensure that diversity is maintained over time.
The Dow Jones – AIG Commodity index family includes nine sector sub-indexes, multiple forward month indexes, indexes for each individual commodity in the original index, Euro-, Yen-, Sterling-, and Swiss Franc-denominated versions of the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index, and the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Spot Index. Also available are total return versions of each of the excess return indexes and sub-indexes. There is an estimated $38 billion invested in financial products that track the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index on a global basis.
As of August 17, 2007, the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index had a cumulative return of 139,69% since its introduction on July 14, 1998.
Estimated historical data for the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index is available back to December 31, 1990.
Further information on the Dow Jones – AIG Commodity Index can be found at www.djindexes.com.
