Leveraging its premier brand and global market position, NASDAQ OMX specializes in providing full-scale, premium index services to financial products issuers, sponsors and investors. Our index offering spans geographies and asset classes and includes diverse families such as Global Equity, U.S., Nordic, Green Economy, Sharia and Commodity Indexes. NASDAQ OMX is also helping to expand the trading and investment landscape with new opportunities in ETFs, ETNs, futures, options, structured products and other investments and derivative securities.
Advancements in China
Chinese investors now have access to the leading companies of the NASDAQ-100 Index (NDX). The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) recently approved the first cross-border exchange-traded fund (ETF) for Chinese investors, brought by Guotai Asset Management Company. This ETF is based on the NASDAQ-100 Index, a leading large-cap global benchmark that includes the 100 largest non-financial stocks listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market® (NASDAQ®). With this groundbreaking approval, the CSRC has paved the way for individual and institutional investors in China to access the U.S. stock market, via an ETF vehicle. The new cross-border ETF is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Green Economy Continues to Grow
2012-2013 are big years in the transition to a Green Economy, though mainstream media headlines may not reflect it. While many focus on the boom in natural gas, the growth in wind and solar are certainly deserving of similar headlines. Record-breaking installations over the past few years have boosted renewable energy as the supplier of almost 16% of U.S. electrical generating capacity, more than nuclear and oil combined. In March 2013, according to SustainableBusiness.com, renewable energy accounted for 100% of all new electrical capacity in the U.S., and 82% for the first quarter as a whole. 1546 megawatts (MW) of renewables came online, compared to 340 MW of natural gas- according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), in the form of six wind farms (958 MW), 38 solar farms (537 MW) and 28 biomass plants (46 MW). The solar added is more than double that of the first quarter last year. In 2012, renewables accounted for almost half of all new electrical generating capacity—46.22%—and this doesn’t count the growth of small rooftop solar systems.
Learn more about the Green Economy sector.
NASDAQ Market Quality Program
The NASDAQ Market Quality Program (MQP) is the first proprietary market structure and incentive program that allows Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) issuers to contribute funds to the exchange that may be used to pay Market Makers. NASDAQ is the first ETF listing exchange to launch an issuer-funded, FINRA rule 5250-exempt, competitive incentivized Market Making program. It aims to bring greater liquidity to ETFs by paying market makers that improve the liquidity and quality of the markets.
This program will be available for ETFs listed only on The NASDAQ Stock Market. For more information, please visit our NASDAQ Trader MQP page.
