NEW YORK, Jan. 20, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, today launched the Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index. The index measures the performance of the top 25 stocks in the Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Index, which is comprised of Malaysia-domiciled companies that pass rules-based screens for Shari'ah compliance.
The Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index is designed to underlie financial products such as exchange-traded funds, structured products and derivatives.
"Since the late 1990s, Dow Jones Indexes has provided the most sophisticated, consistent and representative index series worldwide to capture the performance of companies that comply with Islamic investment principles. The Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index enables a growing Islamic banking and finance industry to participate in the performance of the top 25 Shari'ah-compliant companies in one of the most rapidly emerging and sought after financial markets in Asia," said Michael A. Petronella, president of Dow Jones Indexes.
The Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index is weighted by free float-adjusted market capitalization and component weights are capped at 20%. As of January 18, 2008 the top five components by free float-adjusted market capitalization are Sime Darby Bhd, IOI Corp. Bhd, DiGi.com Bhd, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd and Gamuda Bhd.
As of December 31, 2007, the Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index (USD) gained 176% from its base date, December 31, 2003 in a backtest.(1)
The Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index is calculated in U.S. Dollar (USD) and Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) and reviewed quarterly in March, June, September and December.
Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Islamic Market (DJIM) Indexes is the first-ever index family to measure the global universe of investable equities that pass industry and financial ratio screens for Shari'ah compliance. The index family includes more than 70 regional, country and industry indexes derived from the flagship Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index. Other indexes in the DJIM index series are the Dow Jones Islamic Market Sustainability Index, which combines Islamic investing principles with sustainability criteria; and Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index, the first index to track Islamic bonds. The DJIM Indexes combine Islamic investment principles with Dow Jones Indexes' objective, transparent and rules-based methodology. A six-member supervisory board of Islamic scholars also counsels Dow Jones Indexes on the Shari'ah compliance of eligible stocks for the DJIM Indexes.
For more information on the Dow Jones Islamic Market index series please visit www.djindexes.com.
Journalists may e-mail questions regarding this press release to PR-Indexes@dowjones.com or contact Dow Jones Indexes/STOXX press office:
New York: +1-212-597-5720 Frankfurt: +49-69-29-725-290
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About Dow Jones Indexes
A full-service index provider, Dow Jones Indexes develops, maintains and licenses indexes for use as benchmarks and as the basis of investment products. Best known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Indexes also is co-owner of the Dow Jones STOXX indexes, the world's leading pan-European indexes, and together with Wilshire Associates, provides the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Index family, which is anchored by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 and covers more than 12,000 securities in 59 markets. Beyond equity indexes, Dow Jones Indexes maintains a number of alternative indexes, including measures of the hedge fund and commodity markets. Dow Jones indexes are maintained according to clear, unbiased and systematic methodologies that are fully integrated within index families. www.djindexes.com
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(1) The Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 Index was first published on January 21, 2008. All estimated daily historical closing prices prior to that date are based on back-testing, i.e. calculations of how the index might have performed in the past if it had existed. Back-tested performance information is purely hypothetical and is solely for informational purposes. It does not represent actual performance, and past performance is not indicative of future results.