Five new Dow Jones-AIG indexes launched

Dow Jones Indexes and AIG Financial Products have released five new indexes and sub-indexes covering futures on commodities including agricultural products and energy.

Dow Jones and AIG have produced euro- and yen-denominated versions of their existing commodities index, introduced in 1998, in response to demand for non-dollar-denominated commodity indexes in Europe and Japan.

The companies have also launched the Dow Jones-AIG ExEnergy Sub-Index, which is based on a basket of commodities excluding energy prices: aluminium, coffee, copper, corn, cotton, gold, lean hogs, live cattle, nickel, silver, soybeans, soybean oil, sugar, wheat and zinc. The Agriculture Sub-Index covers coffee, corn, cotton, soybeans, soybean oil, sugar and wheat.

The fifth index, the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Spot Index, is based on the spot prices of the commodities listed in the existing commodity index, ignoring holding costs and the effects of rolling futures contracts.

Joseph Cassano, president and chief executive of AIG Financial Products, said that commodities were attracting increasing interest from around the world: "Growing numbers of investors are taking a closer look at commodities indexes because returns have historically been negatively correlated with stock and bond returns and positively correlated with inflation measures."

$15 billion is invested in Dow Jones-AIG commodity index tracking products worldwide, the companies estimate.