Kazakhstan's new ITS trading platform launches its own stock indices
ASTANA. Aug 10 (Interfax) - The ITS international trading platform started publishing the values of its own first stock indices, the ITS World Index and the ITS Shariah Index, ITS said on Thursday.
The ITS World Index (ticker ITSW) is the main index and includes shares of the 50 largest companies from the US, Europe and Asia, including American Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway (SPB: BRK.B), Tesla (SPB: TSLA ), European AstraZeneca, Shell (SPB: RDS.A), Novartis, SAP, Asian Alibaba Group, Toyota, Sony, Kazakhstani Kaspi.kz and KazMunayGas.
The ITS Shariah Index (ticker ITSS) was created jointly with Sahih Invest and includes the shares of the 30 largest Shariah compliant companies listed on the ITS. The top 10 index includes securities of such international companies as Tesla, Visa, ExxonMobil , Amazon, Johnson &Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Chevron, Merck & Co, Adobe and Salesforce, and Cisco.
"ITS indices have two purposes. Firstly, investors in the time zones between London and Hong Kong, from 11:00 am to 03:00 am the next day, Astana time, receive a qualitative indicator of the general situation on the world market in real time. Secondly, in collaboration with the financial market participants in Kazakhstan and with the support of the AIFC (The Astana International Financial Centre), ITS has already begun working on creating exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on its indexes. Once they are introduced on the market, any investor will have the opportunity to purchase a portfolio of stocks from all global companies included in the index," Alexander Diakovsky, Managing Director of ITS, said.
As reported, the new international trading platform ITS, located in the jurisdiction of the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC), commenced operations in Kazakhstan in early June. The site does not work with Russian brokers and securities.
At the first stage, investors can trade more than 1,500 shares and depositary receipts that are listed in the US on the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges.
The largest Kazakh professional participants in the securities market - financial intermediaries, both accredited and directly registered with the AIFC, can become direct clients of ITS. Investors, both individuals and legal entities, will have access to trading through Kazakh brokers and banks.
ITS expects that during the first half of the year after the start of trading, about 15 professional participants will connect to the exchange. Retail investors will have access to trading on ITS as brokers connect.
Two more stock exchanges operate in Kazakhstan: the country's largest, the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange and the Astana International Exchange (AIX, under the jurisdiction of the Astana Financial Center). Securities from Kazakhstani issuers are mainly traded on both floors, and they work with Russian brokers, among others.