Since Tuesday, ten additional exchange-listed index funds of the iShares issuer (Barclays Global Investment) are tradable on Xetra®. The offering in Deutsche Börse’s XTF segment has thus increased to a total of 507 index funds.
„With more than 500 ETFs on offer, our XTF segment has achieved a further milestone. Deutsche Börse continues to hold the top position in European ETF trade – based on both the number of tradable exchange-listed ETFs as well as monthly trading volume. In the third quarter, our XTF segment reached a market share of 44 percent in the trading volume of ETFs in Europe,” said Rainer Riess, Managing Director of Xetra Market Development at Deutsche Börse.
With the introduction of the XTF segment in April 2000, Deutsche Börse gave the starting signal for ETF trade in Europe and has since then been the market leader in Europe. The first three products in European ETF trade were launched on the leading benchmarks DJ EURO STOXX 50®, DJ STOXX 50® and DAX®. ETFs have continuously developed since then, and have become one of the most popular investment products even in times of crisis. ETFs on equities, bonds and commodities are available to private and institutional investors also when employing a variety of strategies such as short, dividend yields or value/growth. The iShares DAX ETF achieved the highest trading volume in the XTF segment by far with an average of €1.3 billion per month in 2009.
“Innovative indices and the ETFs launched on them offer a broad investor base cost-effective access to entire subjects, sectors and markets. Successful ETFs are based on transparent, strictly rule-based and tradable indices,” noted Dr. Hartmut Graf, head of Deutsche Börse’s index business.
The ten new iShares ETF on Xetra are comprised of seven equity-index and three bond-index ETFs. The equity index ETFs enable investors to participate in the performance of individual countries and regions. With the iShares MSCI World, investors participate in the performance of approximately 1,700 companies from more than 20 industrialized nations, which together constitute around 90 percent of market capitalization. With the iShares MSCI Europe, investors focus on the performance of around 400 medium to large-sized companies in Europe.
To track performance of US or Japanese companies, investors can invest in iShares ETFs S&P 500 as well as MSCI Japan. The S&P 500 Index contains 500 US blue chip companies, while the MSCI Japan Index comprises over 300 medium to large-sized Japanese companies. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets offers the opportunity of participating in the performance of over 700 medium to large-sized companies from more than 20 emerging markets.
In contrast to the iShares ETFs on these indices that are already tradable in the XTF segment, the five new ETFs do not distribute earnings but reinvest them in the index portfolio instead. Thus investors participate in the respective fund’s earnings via share price performance.
For both the following iShares ETFs, the full amount of profit is distributed to investors on a semi-annual or quarterly basis. The MSCI Emerging Markets SmallCap Index comprises companies from emerging markets with a market capitalization of 200 million to 1.5 billion US dollars. The MSCI Pacific ex-Japan Index includes companies in the Asia-Pacific region with the exception of Japan on the basis of free-float market capitalization. It comprises the equity markets of Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The three new iShares bond-index ETFs are based exclusively on government bonds denominated in euro. With the iShares Barclays Euro Government Bond 5-7 and the iShares Barclays Euro Government Bond 10-15 ETF, investors can track performance of highly liquid government bonds from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, which have a minimum residual maturity of 5–7 or 10–15 years, respectively. The iShares Barclays Euro Treasury Bond ETF enables investors to participate in the performance of government bonds with a residual maturity of at least one year and a minimum outstanding volume of 300 million euros.
10 new iShares ETFs on Xetra | 6 KB |