The new year saw the introduction of some new investment products based on the Nasdaq 100 index.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce launched a new family of protected index funds on Dec. 4, 1998. The CIBC Five-Year Protected Funds are the first funds to guarantee 100% of the investor’s initial investment over a five year period.
Three Credit Suisse First Boston traders were fired after one of them attempted to manipulate the OMX, Sweden's share index.
James Archer, 24, the son of British writer and politician Jeffrey Archer; Adrian Ezra, 26; and David Crisanti, 34, were members of a highly successful index-arbitrage team in London, nicknamed the Flaming Ferraris after their favorite cocktail.
Select Sector SPDRs, as well as options on them, began trading on the American Stock Exchange on December 22, 1998.
FTSE International added real-time Pan-European sectors to its FTSE Eurotop 300 index with the release of the Euro on January 4, 1999.
The ten broad economic groups and the 39 industry sectors they are divided into were created to accommodate European fund managers in the wake of the EMU. Rather than structuring their portfolios around countries, they will now be basing them on industries. Eventually all the FTSE indices will be organized by a similar system.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. launched a series of bond indexes Jan. 1, 1999, for the commercial mortgage-backed securities market, the high yield European market, and the non-Euro denominated European bond market.
Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has launched a new global equity-benchmark index aimed at investors who follow Islamic investment guidelines.
The new index - called the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index, or DJIMI -tracks about 600 companies whose products and services are permissible according to strict interpretations of Shari'ah law. The companies in the index are from 30 countries around the world, including the U.S.
Enhancing something is supposed to improve it. So "enhanced index" mutual funds ought to be better than plain-vanilla index funds.
Charles Schwab & Co. released the results of its second quarterly Mutual Interest Council survey Feb.