The Spannr Longevity Stock Index Methodology & FAQ
Methodology
The Spannr Longevity Stock Index is designed to track the performance of companies that are developing medicine or technology that target the aging process to help extend lifespan.
The index is targeting the biotech sub-category known as aging, longevity, or geroscience, which is focused on understanding, measuring, diagnosing, mitigating or reversing the effects of aging.
Areas of biology that are core to aging and underlie multiple age-related diseases include senescent cells, mitochondrial health, nutrient/metabolic pathways/signaling (mTOR, AMPK, IGF1, etc.), proteostasis, and epigenetics.
Other areas include neurodegenerative diseases and regenerative medicine, such as stem cell therapy.
The index has a base date of May 10, 2022 with an initial value of 100.
Inclusion Criteria
To be eligible for inclusion in the index, companies must:
- Have an explicit focus on aging or goal of extending lifespan
- Have a platform or technology with the capability to treat or measure an aspect of aging that underlies multiple age-related pathologies, not just a single neurodegenerative disease or cancer.
- Publicly traded security listed in a developed market on a major stock exchange
- A minimum market capitalization of $10 million.
Weighting
The index is weighted as follows:
- Components are weighted based on their security-level market capitalization.
- A single security cap of 50% is applied.
- Rebalanced on a quarterly basis for changes in companies included in the index
FAQ
What is the Spannr Longevity Stock Index?
The Spannr Longevity Stock Index has been designed to simplify and clarify the longevity market. Our index consists of publicly-traded companies that are explicitly focused on aging or have the goal of extending human lifespan.
Until now, understanding the investment ecosystem that focuses on longevity has been a very confusing process. Many companies within longevity are targeting highly technical and scientific work. This creates challenges for both retail and professional investors alike.
To help solve these problems, we’ve set specific parameters that set index inclusion criteria and weighting. You can read the details about our Spannr Longevity Stock Index Methodology at the top of this page.
Why is the Spannr Longevity Stock Index important to investors?
Humans are living longer today than ever before. Now, breakthroughs in biotechnology are pushing lifespans even further. Investors now have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an emerging market while, at the same time, helping fund a life changing industry.
Life extension is also arguably the largest Total Addressable Market (TAM) to ever exist. How many people in the world do you think want to live longer? And how much would they pay to do that?
Theoretically, today’s leading longevity biotech and geroscience companies – many of which are included in our index – have the potential to impact every single human on this planet. When you consider that the space is still in its infancy, the opportunity for early investors is second to none.
However, there are an endless number of approaches that companies are currently taking to tackle longevity. This creates significant confusion and uncertainty for investors looking to back companies that will have the most success.
Furthermore, as the industry evolves, new market participants are entering the field everyday. These companies bring new technologies to the world of longevity, which further complicates the broader industry.
By creating an index of pure-play longevity companies, investors can track the industry as a whole. This enables a broader view of how the industry is trending.
How does the Spannr Longevity Stock Index work?
Our index consists of two main operations: technology and investing.
- Technology: The Spannr development team has built all charts, tables, and data insights. The only third-party service we use is for stock market price information. This means that all data related to our Longevity Stock Index is proprietary and produced in-house, based on real-time stock market data.
- Investing: The Spannr investing team maintains all index constituents and rebalances the entire index on a quarterly basis. Stock inclusion and weighting is based on our methodology, which again, you can learn more about in the section above.