S&P GCC Composite: What It Measures and How It Is Built

Direct Answer

The S&P GCC Composite is a rule-based measurement of broad market index covering all eligible equities in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices. Like every index it owns nothing: it is a number produced by applying a published weighting formula to a selected list of companies, revised on a schedule the provider sets.

What this index covers

The S&P GCC Composite covers broad market index covering all eligible equities in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, within the GCC market. S&P Dow Jones Indices defines which securities are eligible, how they are selected from that pool, and how much each one contributes to the published number.

The index name does not state a fixed company count, so the number of constituents follows the eligibility rules rather than a target.

How constituents are weighted

Float-adjusted market capitalization weighted, with float factors that count only investors resident in the Gulf Cooperation Council region. That availability is typically larger than the float available to foreign investors, so weights differ from the Investable version.

The weighting method is the single biggest driver of how an index behaves. Two indexes covering the same market can diverge for years purely because they weight differently, which is why comparing index levels without knowing the method tells you very little.

What qualifies for inclusion

Companies in the six GCC markets (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) that qualify under the S&P Global BMI or the S&P Frontier BMI. Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sit in the Global BMI and the other Pan Arab markets in the Frontier BMI. Shariah versions add a compliance screen.

Eligibility rules are the part of an index most readers never look at and the part that decides what it can possibly measure. A screen that excludes a whole sector, or admits only one listing venue, shapes the result far more than any day of trading does.

When the membership is revised

Follows the parent BMI reconstitutions: emerging markets use a reference date at the close of the last business day of July and take effect on the Monday after the third Friday of September, while frontier markets use a January reference date and take effect on the Monday after the third Friday of March. IPOs are added quarterly on a reference date five weeks earlier.

Reconstitution is the one date an index changes shape by design rather than by price. Funds tracking it have to trade toward the new membership, which is why the schedule matters to anyone holding the tracker rather than only to the provider.

The rule that surprises people

For the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia, the practical limit on shares actually open to foreign investors is also checked: a constituent below 5% is removed at the next quarterly rebalancing, and a stock can be added only at 10% or more.

References

• S&P Dow Jones Indices: S&P Dow Jones Indices: S&P Pan Arab Indices Methodology, as published 2021. Every rule described on this page is taken from this document.

Current S&P GCC Composite constituents

S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes and licenses the S&P GCC Composite constituent list. Swoopr does not republish it here. The provider's own page is the authoritative source for current membership and weights.

S&P Dow Jones Indices: official S&P GCC Composite page

Related reading

• All stock market indexes: how indexes are built, weighted and revised.
• Emerging Markets indexes: others covering the same region.
• Index concentration: measuring how much of an index sits in its largest holdings.
• Index rebalancing and inclusion effects: what happens to a stock when index membership changes.

Frequently Asked Questions