Bloomberg has broadened its equity indexing capabilities with the launch of its first emerging markets and thematic equity indices.
Alan Campbell, Head of Product Management for Bloomberg’s Multi-Asset Index business.
Alan Campbell, Head of Product Management for Bloomberg’s Multi-Asset Index business, said: “We are responding to investor demands for comprehensive and cost-effective alternatives that are fully integrated with our data and distribution channels.”
Although historically best known for its market-leading range of fixed income indices (courtesy of its acquisition of Barclays’ index business) and commodity benchmarks, Bloomberg first diversified into equity indices in September 2019 with the introduction of a suite of US stock market benchmarks including ESG-focused varieties.
The financial-data giant has since expanded its equity index coverage across developed markets and, with the introduction of its first broad emerging markets index, now captures over 99% of the market capitalization in 49 countries.
The Bloomberg Emerging Markets Index covers 26 countries and is weighted by free-float market capitalization. Bloomberg defines Poland, South Korea, and Taiwan as emerging markets, while Chinese A-shares are eligible for inclusion if they are available on the Stock Connect. The construction of regional, single-country, or market capitalization sub-indices is available on request.
Bloomberg also now offers the opportunity to create sector and industry equity sub-indices based on the Bloomberg Industry Classification System (BICS). BICS classifies every company in developed or emerging markets to one of 11 sectors (communications, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, energy, financials, health care, industrials, materials, real estate, technology, and utilities) as well as to a further three granular levels based on 20 industry groups, 59 industries, and 214 sub-industries.
Bloomberg’s independent thematic indexing capabilities, meanwhile, will be powered by Bloomberg Intelligence which conducts research into major market trends that cross traditional industry divisions. Companies are deemed to have direct exposure to a particular theme based on a combination of analyst expertise and data analytics.
The first Bloomberg thematic index will be the Bloomberg Electric Vehicles Index which tracks companies globally that derive significant revenue from electric vehicles, energy storage technologies, autonomous navigation technology, lithium and copper mining, and hydrogen fuel cells. The index will reportedly be used to underlie the $200m KraneShares Electric Vehicles & Future Mobility ETF (KARS US) which is currently linked to an index from Solactive.
Bloomberg also offers a comprehensive suite of foreign exchange indices and introduced its first crypto benchmarks in May 2018 in partnership with Galaxy Digital Capital Management. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Indices consist of single- and multi-crypto benchmarks that track the largest and most liquid digital assets in the market.