(Vienna) Wiener Börse AG enlarges its range of products: Starting today, Monday, standardized derivative products can be traded on the NTX, the New Europe Blue Chip index. "The introduction of futures and options on the NTX is designed to meet the growing interest of Austrian and international institutional investors in derivatives, particularly in the CEE region." said Michael Buhl, Member of the Management Board of Wiener Börse AG. NTX derivatives offer investors a number of benefits: First, derivative products can be traded on Wiener Börse for several CEE markets, second, the conditions are the same for all markets and third, Wiener Börse guarantees transparent and secure settlement. However, the greatest advantage is the easier entry and exit from the market and thus the lower risk. Hedging, asset allocation and position trading will become easier, said Mr. Buhl.
The NTX was developed jointly in the autumn of 2005 by Erste Bank and Wiener Börse, and since 1 February 2006, the NTX has belonged to Wiener Börse. The NTX is a capitalization-weighted, real-time price index contains the top 30 companies from the EU convergence markets in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe thus covering the growth opportunities of the region. In contrast to other indices for this region, the NTX does not contain any Russian or Turkish stocks. Inclusion in the index is determined by the capitalized free float of the stocks. Changes to the index composition and market weighting are done bi-annually.
Currently, the NTX contains the 30 largest blue chip companies listed on the stock exchanges of Budapest, Bucharest, Ljubljana, Prague, Warsaw and Zagreb. The stocks of Austrian companies – which are highly represented in the region – are included with a weighting of around 40%. Since its inception – the NTX was fixed at 1,000 points on 3 Jan. 2005 – the index has risen by some 60%.
Wiener Börse AG has become well-established in the field of indices as an international expert. With the NTX, Wiener Börse now calculates a total of 28 indices on Austrian and international stocks hat can serve as ideal underlying for the issuance of structured products such as warrants, certificates and exchange-traded funds. Today, over 80% of all structured products worldwide relating to Eastern Europe are based on the indices of Wiener Börse.