Live economy equity index construction

The Live Economy Equity Index is designed to answer one question: how is the equity value of companies that depend on live music behaving, weighted by how much they actually depend on it? Existing entertainment and leisure indices answer a broader question and admit companies whose live exposure is incidental. A thematic screen would answer a narrower one and admit companies whose live exposure is asserted rather than measured.

The construction below is a revenue-attribution index. Companies enter at the portion of their equity value that corresponds to a measured share of live revenue, not at their full capitalisation, and not at all if that share cannot be measured from a primary document.

This page is the governing rule. Where the rule and any other page on this site disagree, the rule controls.

A company is eligible when four conditions hold simultaneously. It is listed on a recognised exchange with a primary listing that can be identified unambiguously. Its live-attributable revenue can be read from a primary document — an annual or interim filing, a segment disclosure, or an exchange announcement — rather than from commentary or third-party estimate. Its float-adjusted share count is available from its own disclosure or the exchange record. And its listing meets the liquidity condition fixed at the base date.

A company that fails any condition is not excluded on the merits; it is recorded as unmeasured on the relevant segment page, with the missing condition named. The distinction matters, because an unmeasured company may become eligible when disclosure improves, whereas an ineligible one has been assessed and rejected.

Eligibility is assessed at each rebalance date on the documents available at that date. It is not revised retrospectively when a later filing appears; that would make the historical series unreproducible.

Live Revenue Exposure is the measured share of total revenue attributable to live music and live events. The source requirement is absolute: the figure must be readable from a primary document, and the document must be recorded with the measurement.

Three practices are specifically prohibited. Exposure may not be apportioned by headcount, asset base or geography where revenue is not disclosed. It may not be carried forward from an earlier period once the current period's disclosure exists. And it may not be interpolated between disclosures; the most recent measured value stands until the next one is published.

Where a company reports live activity across several disclosed segments, the exposures are summed and the sources recorded individually. Where segments overlap, the narrower disclosure governs.

A diversified company with a small live business presents the hardest case. Admitting it at full weight would import unrelated exposure into the index; excluding it would omit real live activity from the measurement.

The framework admits such companies at their live-attributable portion only, computed as float-adjusted market capitalisation multiplied by measured exposure. A conglomerate with a low measured exposure therefore contributes proportionately little weight regardless of its absolute size.

A minimum exposure threshold applies below which a company is not admitted at all, on the grounds that a very small attributable portion of a very large company introduces more unrelated price variance than live signal. The threshold is fixed at the base date and published with it.

Weights are computed from Live-Attributable Market Cap: float-adjusted shares multiplied by price multiplied by measured exposure. Each constituent's weight is its Live-Attributable Market Cap as a share of the total across all constituents.

Two series are maintained. The uncapped series applies the weighting rule directly. The capped series applies a maximum single-constituent weight at each rebalance, redistributing the excess pro rata to constituents below the cap and iterating until none breaches it. Both series are published; neither is presented as the primary one without the other.

Where a company's float cannot be sourced, it is not weighted at an assumed float. It is held out until the figure exists.

Every constituent is assigned to exactly one of eight segments, by its dominant live-attributable activity rather than by its overall business. A company with both venue operation and media revenue is assigned by which of the two carries the larger measured live-attributable revenue, not by which is larger overall.

Assignment is recorded with the disclosure that supports it and is reviewed at each rebalance. A change in assignment is logged like any other input revision.

Segment definitions and their boundaries are published on the individual segment pages and are part of this rule.

Splits and stock dividends adjust the share count with no weight effect. Spin-offs are assessed against the eligibility test on their first trading day and admitted only if they pass. Mergers and delistings remove the affected listing at its last traded price and redistribute its weight pro rata to remaining constituents.

These are the only adjustments permitted outside a rebalance date, other than the correction of an input that was wrong when published. Each adjustment is logged with its effective date and the evidencing document.

The rebalance cadence, the announcement lead time and the effective time of day are fixed before the first published level and are not adjustable afterwards. The same applies to the base date and base value: both are set in advance, and the constituent set is frozen at the base date.

None of these parameters is set yet, because setting them before the constituent measurements exist would invite fitting them to a preferred first result. They will be published here, with their effective date, before any level is released.

The index is denominated in United States dollars. Non-USD listings are converted at the rate published by a single named reference source, applied at a fixed daily time, with the source and time recorded alongside the level.

The reference source and conversion time are part of the release parameters and are published with the base date rather than chosen at first calculation.

A missing price does not produce an interpolated price. Where a constituent does not trade on a calculation day, its last traded price is carried and the carry is flagged in the release record; where the absence extends beyond the tolerance fixed at the base date, the constituent is suspended from the calculation and the suspension is published.

A missing exposure or float figure prevents weighting outright. There is no default, no sector average and no prior-period substitution.

An input that was wrong when published is corrected, the corrected series is republished, and the correction is logged with its date, the affected period and the reason. Live Index does not silently restate a published level.

An input that has since changed — a later filing revising a prior disclosure — is applied prospectively at the next rebalance and does not alter historical levels. Confusing these two cases is how index histories become unreproducible.

The site-wide corrections policy governs; this section states how it applies to index inputs.

No level, sub-index level, weight or constituent count is published until every release requirement is met. Until then this vertical publishes the rule, the segment definitions, the glossary and the private register, and states plainly that no series exists.

The gate is enforced in the record model rather than by editorial intention: a record marked as a framework placeholder cannot render a figure, is withheld from the search index and the sitemap, and is absent from the machine-readable corpus and retrieval listings. Clearing the gate is a matter of supplying measured, provenance-bearing inputs.