SIX announced on 19 October 2026 that UBS Asset Management is the first issuer to have chosen the SMI Equal Weighted Index as the benchmark for an exchange-traded fund (ETF). The product, named UBS SMI Equal Weight ETF, was listed on SIX Swiss Exchange in the week before the announcement, according to the stock exchange operator's press release. This is not a new market index, but a different way of distributing weight among the companies that make up the Swiss Market Index (SMI), the main index of Swiss equities.

An SMI in which every company carries the same weight

The standard SMI is a market-capitalisation-weighted index: the more a company is worth on the stock market, the more it counts in the index. Mechanically, the largest companies listed in Switzerland occupy a dominant position in it, and the index's performance depends heavily on a handful of stocks.

The SMI Equal Weighted Index uses the same constituents as the SMI, but assigns them, according to SIX, “the same weight at each rebalancing”. In other words, on each rebalancing date, every company in the index receives an identical share, regardless of its size. SIX presents this method as a “systematic alternative” to capitalisation weighting that retains exposure to the leading Swiss equities.

Two clarifications are needed. First, the press release gives neither the number of constituents nor the current weight of the largest stocks in the standard SMI; on this basis, it is therefore not possible to quantify the difference in concentration between the two versions of the index. Second, the frequency of rebalancing is not stated. Yet between two rebalancings, weights drift with prices: a company whose share price rises faster than the others sees its share grow until the next rebalancing. Equal weighting is therefore exact on rebalancing dates, and approximate the rest of the time.

Concentration and risk: what the announcement says

According to SIX, the equal-weighted index “reduces concentration risk” and offers broader exposure to the leading companies listed in Switzerland. Raimund Müller, Head of ETF and Index Fund Sales for Switzerland and Liechtenstein at UBS Asset Management, describes an approach that reduces “single-stock and sector concentration” and offers “a more balanced representation of the market”.

A distinction must be drawn here between what stems from the construction of the index and what is a matter of interpretation. The first point is mechanical: if every company carries the same weight, none can dominate the index at the time of rebalancing. The second is less clear-cut. Reducing the weight of the largest companies amounts, by construction, to increasing that of the smallest constituents of the index. The risk profile is therefore not eliminated, but shifted: the index becomes less sensitive to the movements of a few heavyweights and more exposed to the companies that carry little weight in the standard SMI. The press release publishes no historical performance or volatility data comparing the two indices; on the basis of this source, it therefore cannot be claimed that either version has been more or less risky than the other over any given period.

Rebalancing also has a practical consequence that the announcement does not address: periodically bringing all positions back to the same weight means selling part of the stocks that have risen the most and buying those that have fallen. The fund's fees and the costs associated with these rebalancings are not specified in the press release.

A growing Swiss ETF market

SIX places this launch in the context of growth in its ETF segment. According to figures published by the operator:

  • 168 new ETFs were listed on SIX Swiss Exchange in the first half of 2026;
  • as of mid-2026, 2,244 ETF products from 39 issuers were tradable there;
  • more than 8,200 ETFs are accessible via ETF Quote on Demand (QOD), the Swiss exchange's Request for Quote service.

These figures cover SIX's entire ETF market and not just the new product. For the operator, this momentum favours differentiated index concepts designed to complement conventional capitalisation-weighted exposures. Christian Bahr, Head Index Services & ESG at SIX, sees it as a reflection of “continued interest in alternative approaches” to investing in Swiss equities.

What we know about UBS's SMI ETF

The press release states that the ETF is listed and tradable on SIX Swiss Exchange, with intraday liquidity and access through standard brokerage accounts. However, several pieces of information useful for understanding the product are missing: the ticker symbol, the management fees, the trading currency, the replication method and the volume of assets at listing. These details are normally found in the issuer's documentation, which the SIX press release does not reproduce.

The launch says nothing, in itself, about the merits of such a product for any given investor. Above all, it illustrates a methodological choice: the same list of companies can produce indices that behave differently depending on how weight is distributed among them. This article is for information purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation.

Sources

  • SIX: “UBS Is the First Issuer to Select SMI Equal Weighted Index by SIX for their New ETF”