Notes from the Editor

John A. Prestbo

Editor and Executive Director Dow Jones Indexes

A colleague recently related that as he was driving home from work, he hit an enormous pothole on a small back road. The car was jolted—and so was he—but he continued on, since there was no place to pull over.

He soon stopped at a gas station and examined the car. There was some damage and a tire seemed to be deflating, but he knew that it could have been a lot worse. He could have been stranded or lost the wheel, he said. He considered himself lucky.

I was struck by how similarly many people are looking at today's markets. The phrase "It could have been a lot worse" is heard increasingly these days. In my travels around the U.S. and in the Far East recently, I've found that many people, including myself, feel like that driver.

In this quarter's Insights, our stories seem to fall into the same category. Our subjects are looking in the rear-view mirror, checking to see if there are parts strewn about and "happy" that it was not nearly as bad as it might have been.

First, we sat down with Richard Kang, who is the Chief Investment Officer and Director of Research at Emerging Global Advisors. In a far-reaching conversation, he talked about his company's new ETFs based on the Dow Jones Emerging Markets Sector Titans Indexes^SM.

Dow Jones Indexes is a long-standing leader in socially responsible indexing. Lisa Meyer, part of our U.S. sales team, spoke with us about the recent 10-year anniversary of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes^SM and their evolution into widely used benchmarks for the industry.

Next, we talked to our own Ridgely Walters about the innovative methodology of the Dow Jones RBP Indexes^SM.

This issue also features some interesting commentary on the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index^SM written by Jamie Farmer, our Senior Director of Global Index Operations. He discusses the recent change in the weightings of the various commodity groups within the index.

Finally, we profile Kris Schneck, who oversees our index data licensing. Kris explains her role in selling real-time index data to data vendors and financial media.

I hope you enjoy these stories. As we move on from our collective market "pothole," let's hope that our road ahead is a little smoother than it was a year ago.