Swiss Banking News

10.10.2007 On October 8, 2007, Credit Suisse announce the launch of its latest index in the HOLTSelectTM series - global HS Market Neutral Index. HS Market Neutral Index offers provides investors with the opportunity to invest neutral strategy with low correlation to other asset classes in a rules-based market. Also, it reduces market risk as it ensures sector and region neutrality. To identify key investment opportunities, the index uses Credit Suisse's HOLT framework and provides gives access to HOLT's database of over 18 000 stocks from more than 55 countries. To construct the index, an initial universe of the top 275 North American, 300 European and 175 Japanese stocks is applied by market cap. Then, the universe is divided into 10 sectors that include financials, energy, information technology, telecoms, health care, materials, consumer discretionary, industrials, consumer staples and utilities. The top ranking 10% of each sector are taken. Then, the universe is divided into 50 sector and region categories, using 5 currency regions and the 10 above-mentioned sectors. The resulting index has an equal number of long and short stocks. It also ensures that there is no sector, regional or currency bias. Calculated by Standard & Poor's and rebalanced on a quarterly basis, the HS Market Neutral Index has a compounded annual return of 11.6% since January 1996. The index has delivered positive excess returns in 81% of quarters.