nl20Today the elections for the European Parliament. If the polls aren’t mistaken the biggest winner will be the anti-European PVV party. Not to discuss politics, but TOM is probably catching the right wave with their own Dutch stock index – the NL20.

Silently the website for the NL20 has been launched, and of course it’s an all Dutch affair. The only English can be found in the draft version of the Rulebook, added on the 21th of May.

There’s a good case to be made for removing the Egyptian OCI and the French Gemalto and Unibail from the Dutch stock index AEX – but it isn’t that easy to cover it in rules without getting too arbitrary.

No SBM Offshore

The stock universe is described as the “securities of companies listed on the Reference Market in the Netherlands that represent Dutch entrepreneurship“. There we have it, the famous Dutch entrepreneurship.

That’s the only reason I can think of why the current AEX member SBM Offshore is left out of the NL20 index. Bribing officials in Africa and Brasil apparently doesn’t represent Dutch entrepreneurship.

Here’s are the constituents. Furthermore it’s a total return index (like the DAX) so it will “outperform” the regular AEX pretty fast.  It will be calculated continuously.

Suppose the derivatives will be announced shortly – with their retail order flow they should start with a fee holiday for everyone for the first month. That’s their only chance of beating the strong brand of the AEX.

Jack