SGX made an announcement on 27 May 2020 about gradually discontinuing the offering of MSCI index derivative contracts except MSCI Singapore. The market didn’t react well after this announcement. SGX stock was sold down by almost 12% by the end of the trading day. Is MSCI index products so important to SGX? Is the selldown overdone? I will provide my personal views to these questions. At the same time, I want to emphasise that my views may not be what exactly transpired between SGX and MSCI. Neither am I sure about SGX’s strategy going forward. We will never know the truth unless we are the insiders. So I can only make educated guesses. Many Financial Products Require Indexes Indexes are the taxonomy of the capital markets as they provide the structure for the creation of investment products. First, we shape the indexes, then the indexes shape us. This is why...