Austria is a small and prosperous country, often considered one of the most stable in Europe. For those interested to invest there, we will review the four most important stock market indices in Austria.
Content
Introduction
With a population of around 9 million people and one of the richest economies in Europe, Austria offers us more potential than we can imagine.
Often compared to Germany, the truth is that Austria’s economy is significantly different. Especially thanks to its geographical location in the heart of Europe.
Austria is highly integrated within the DACH region, alongside Germany and Switzerland, but many of its large companies are also present in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and the Balkan region.
As a result, its economy can benefit greatly from the higher growth rates that many of its neighboring countries enjoy. After all, such integration dates to the Habsburg era, when Vienna was the capital of an empire that included all these territories.
The Vienna Stock Exchange is the most important in the country. And, unlike most European stock exchanges, Vienna’s is still in Austrian hands. This means it has not been acquired by any international investment group.
The company that operates the Vienna Stock Exchange is Wiener Börse AG, which also owns the stock exchanges of many Central and Eastern European countries, such as Prague, Budapest, Zagreb and Ljubljana. Here we have one of many examples of Austrian influence in this region of the continent.
Other important companies in the country are the financial groups Erste Group and Raiffeisen, or the energy company OMV.
In the following sections we discuss the 4 most representative stock market indices of Austria:
ATX (Austrian Traded Index)
The ATX, short for Austria Traded Index, is the main stock index of the country.
Introduced in 1991, the ATX is made up of 20 of the largest listed companies in Austria. The market capitalization adjusted by free float is used to calculate index weightings, so the largest corporations tend to dominate the movements of the index.
It should be noted that no stock can weigh more than 20% within the index. If such a situation were to occur, the weight of that company would be capped at that percentage.
The most representative sectors of the ATX are finance, energy, and staples.
For those interested in more information about the ATX, here is the link to the website of the Vienna Stock Exchange.
ATX 5
The ATX 5 is a rather curious index. Basically, it only takes the 5 companies with the highest market capitalization of the ATX. Because Austria has few large corporations, these also enjoy the most liquidity in the market.
Within the ATX 5, no company can have a weight higher than 35%, and only one of them can exceed 20%. All others are capped at a weight of 20%.
If you want to see which companies are part of ATX 5, check out this link.
ATX Prime
Also calculated by the Vienna Stock Exchange, the ATX Prime is Austria’s most general stock index.
It consists of all companies listed in the main category of the Vienna Stock Exchange. This means that the exact number of shares within the ATX Prime fluctuates over time. However, the exact number of stocks tends to hover around 40.
Obviously, all ATX 20 companies are part of the ATX Prime. But we will find some additional stocks in the ATX Prime, so we will have greater exposure to small-cap stocks.
As always, I leave you the direct link to the website of Wiener Börse.
MSCI Austria
To conclude this article, we will take a look at the MSCI Austria, a stock index calculated by the US corporation MSCI.
The MSCI Austria is composed of all Austrian stocks that are part of the MSCI World Stock Index. This ensures all of them are large and liquid enough.
Although the exact number of companies within the MSCI Austria may change over time, it is usually around 5. Consequently, the correlation between the MSCI Austria and the ATX 5 is very high.
Here is the link to the MSCI website so you can analyze it for yourself.
I hope you found this brief analysis of Austria’s stock indices useful. If so, I encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter:
Clear Finances
And if you want to learn about the major stock indices in other countries, check out the next section:
Funds and ETF
Comments are closed.