Nasdaq says the NASDAQ-100 European Tracker has been listed on the Borsa Italiana and commenced trading yesterday. The exchange traded fund (ETF) is designed to track the NASDAQ-100 Index, which consists of the 100 largest non-financial stocks on the NASDAQ stock market.
“The EQQQ provides European investors with low cost access to the entire range of companies in the NASDAQ-100 Index in European hours, on a European market,” says John Jacobs, CEO of NASDAQ Financial Products. “Because the NASDAQ-100 Index has such a diverse group of underlying stocks, investors can instantly broaden their portfolio mix with companies that represent a wide variety of sectors including, computer hardware and software, media, retail, life science and biotechnology. Some of the world’s most visionary companies are amongst those included in the NASDAQ-100 Index, including Microsoft, Dell, Starbucks, Cisco, Oracle, Intel and Amazon.com. Today’s listing in Italy further expands the reach of NASDAQ’s investment products in Europe, following the launch of EQQQ in UK, Germany and Belgium in 2002. NASDAQ believes there is a great future for ETFs in the European capital marketplace, which has accounted for the majority of new product launches in 2002 and 2003.”