State Street Global Advisors, sponsor of the venerable line of SPDR ETFs, filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission to change both the name and the underlying index of its SPDR DJ Global Titans ETF (NYSEArca: DGT).
DGT will soon become the "SPDR Global Dow ETF," when it begins tracking the Global Dow sometime later this year. The ticker symbol and the fund's expense ratio of 0.50 percent will remain the same. SSgA didn’t specify the date in the filing when DGT will begin tracking its new benchmark.
Currently, DGT's benchmark is the Dow Jones Global Titans Index, which comprises 50 of the world's largest publicly traded multinational companies. As of Feb. 23, 2011, DGT's top holdings were Exxon Mobil, which accounted for 6.5 percent of assets under management; Apple Inc., at 4.66 percent; and General Electric Co., at 3.22 percent.
In terms of sector allocation, energy, which accounts for 22.28 percent of fund assets, is the largest, followed by information technology (20.76 percent) and financials (13.46 percent). The components of the Dow Jones Global Titans Index are selected using float-adjusted market capitalization, revenue and net income. By contrast, the Global Dow index consists of 150 equally weighted multinational blue chips selected by an "Averages Committee" composed of the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, the head of Dow Jones Equities Research, and the head of research at CME Group, Dow Jones Indexes' parent company.
All of the components of the Dow Jones industrial average are represented in the Global Dow Index.
Indeed, Dow Jones likens the Global Dow to a Dow Jones industrial average for the global economy, and the Averages Committee selects the components of the index using objective criteria such as market capitalization, as well more subjective factors like a company's reputation and to what extent it is of interest to investors.
