Salomon Smith Barney (SSB) has launched what may be one of the first global
indexes intended as an independently created extension of a competing provider’s
index.

Stoxx Ltd., the European equities index compiler and affiliate to Dow Jones
Indexes, thinks it is winning the market share battle in Europe for pan-European
and Eurozone (i.e. EU countries only) derivatives trading.

Fidelity Investments will keep price ceilings intact on four of its stock
index mutual funds in a bid to stay competitive in the low-cost index fund
market.

The past few months have seen more signs that Asian indexes and index funds
are becoming more important to investors in the Asia-Pacific region.

So institutional assets in index funds alone in the US were $1.6 trillion at year end 1998, after more than doubling from 1995 to 1998. Of the nearly 1500 institutional funds followed by Greenwich Associates, 24.4% of their total assets are invested in passive management strategies. Since the bulk are probably indexed to the Standard & Poor’s 500, that’s similar to a fifth or a quarter of the industry investing with the same money manager.

The year 1999 may have marked an early sign that indexing, and the practice
of buying to exploit a stock’s inclusion in an important index, is becoming a
factor in Japanese equity markets.

The stock-index wars are heating up: Standard & Poor’s completed its S&P
Global 1200 Index with the release of its UK 150 Index on October 5.

n index has been introduced for the Prague, Budapest and Warsaw exchanges by
Czech brokerage firm Wood & Co., in conjunction with Reuters Group PLC.

British pension investors are snapping up index funds these days. In the
first half of 1999 local fund manager Legal & General Group PLC reaped the
largest increase in such investment, but the US’ State Street Global Advisors
moved rapidly up to second place behind it.