This is the age of stock market indices. New special-purpose indices come on the scene almost every week, it seems. Superfluous? Some, perhaps. But others light up corners of the market, offer new strategies for investment and provide new shopping lists for your clients.

In Canada, Standard & Poor’s Corp. and TMX Group Inc. have launched a batch of new indices in the past few months. They include:

> S&P/TSX Clean Technology Index, which tracks shares of 20 companies in the “green technology” business. “This new index provides a gauge for investors to assess the hypothesis that global interest in clean technology will lead to a favourable environment for clean technology companies,” says S&P.

> S&P/TSX 60 130/30 Strategy Index alters the weighting of top-performing and bottom-performing stocks in the large-cap S&P/TSX 60 index.

> Four new equal-weighted indices for bank shares, base metals and oil and gas companies. The S&P/TSX equal-weight diversified banks index is based on banks in the S&P/TSX 60 index; oil and gas stocks in the S&P/TSX 60 index are the base for the S&P/TSX equal-weight oil and gas index. Then, there are two versions of the base metals index, the S&P/TSX equal-weight global base metals index and its Canadian-dollar hedged version. They are based on the S&P/TSX global base metals index.

Except for the clean-tech index and the equal-weight base metals index, these new indices are tracked by exchange-traded funds.

The cleantech index, launched in March, contains stocks too small to be part of a large ETF portfolio. The index’s virtue: it identifies companies in various industries, including renewable energy production, distribution and specialized suppliers, energy efficiency, waste reduction and water management, and low-impact materials and products. That makes it a useful menu for investors seeking exposure in this area.

The S&P/TSX 60 130/30 strategy index is the most innovative of the new offerings. S&P has divided the S&P/TSX 60 index into two baskets. It uses a “rules-driven framework leveraging quantitative and qualitative factors, including capitalization rate, earnings quality and equity analyst recommendations,” S&P says.

Weightings of the 10 top-rated stocks are increased by 3%, and weightings of the 10 lowest-rated stocks are cut by the same percentage. Weightings are adjusted every quarter. The index, started in January, has been backdated six years. The index is traded in ETF form by BetaPro Management Inc.’ s Horizons AlphaPro S&P/TSX 60 130/30 ETF.

Similar backdating has been calculated for the new equal-weight bank index, the equal-weight oil and gas index and the equal-weight global base metals hedged index. Toronto-based Bank of Montreal has produced ETFs for these indices.

Of these new indices, the equal-weight banks index would have been most profitable for inves-tors. Since the market hit bottom in early 2009, it has gained relative to the S&P/TSX GICS bank industry group index. The equal-weight oil and gas index has also outperformed its comparable index, the S&P/TSX GICS capped energy index, since the crash. IE