Ossiam, a leading provider of smart beta exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has made its low-volatility global equity ETF, the Ossiam ETF World Minimum Variance NR, more accessible to Swiss investors via a listing on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
Ossiam has made its low-volatility global equity ETF available to Swiss investors via a listing on SIX Swiss Exchange.
The new listing, which includes both euro (ticker: WOMV) and US dollar (ticker: WDMV) trading lines, complements the fund’s existing listings on the London Stock Exchange, NYSE Euronext Paris, Borsa Italiana and Deutsche Börse.
The ETF replicates the performance of the independently calculated Ossiam World Minimum Variance Index.
The aim of this index is to deliver the net total return performance of a dynamic selection of the 400 most liquid stocks from the S&P Global 1200 Index, weighted to minimise the risk of the total portfolio. The S&P Global 1200 is a market-capitalisation-weighted index covering 31 countries and approximately 70% of global stock market capitalisation.
Major constituents of the Ossiam World Minimum Variance Index include NTT DoCoMo, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, Southern Company, AutoZone, Consolidated Edison, Astellas Pharma, East Japan Railway Company, Duke Energy and McDonald’s.
The strategy has performed strongly, outperforming the S&P Global 1200 Index on year-to-date, one-year, three-year and five-year bases. In the 12 months to the end of March 2013, the Ossiam index was up 17.85% compared to a return of 11.22% for the S&P index. Moreover, this outperformance was achieved with lower volatility, 7.34% versus 10.31%.
Commenting on the listing, Bruno Poulin, CEO of Ossiam, said: “We are now making the strategy available in ETF wrappers to Swiss investors. This gives them access to a successful minimum variance strategy applied to global equities in world developed markets, either in euro or US dollar, thus diversifying their portfolios while controlling volatility. Switzerland is a key market where we see significant opportunities and investor interest.”
The fund currently has assets of €24.3 million across its various existing listings and is distributed and marketed through Paris-headquartered Natixis Global Asset Management, of which Ossiam is an affiliate. It has a total expense ratio (TER) of 0.65% per annum.
Ossiam, which specialises in systematically-managed, non-market-cap-weighted strategies, currently has total assets under management of €709 million across a range of equal weight and minimum variance strategies.