About the Dark Side Index

The Dark Side Index (DRKX) is intended to monitor the financial health of the "villianous" forces. It is the opposite of the "socially responsible" indices like MSCI KLD 400 Social Index. The financial popularity of the dark side comes and goes. This index gives an overall reading of the financial success of percieved villianous companies.

The DRKX has several categories each represented by a single company. Two of the categories, cyber crime and whale-dolphin-veal, do not currently have a representative company. The categories are weighted and the stock values are normalized so that the index value is 100 on the base date. The index is also normalized by the S&P 500 index. This means that an increase in DRKX is a genuine shift to the Dark Side.

Here are the companies making up the DSI:

Halliburton ( Oil and Gas Muscle)
Philip Morris ( Nicotine Addiction)
Bally (Gambling)
Marcho Farms (Veal, Whale, and Dolphin Meat)
Rio Tinto(Destructive Mining)
Huaneng Power ( worlds most polluting company)
BAE Systems (Arms Exporter)
Diageo ( Alcohol Dealer)
Russian Business Network (Cyber Crime)
Nestle (Child Slave Labor)
New Frontier Media (Pornography)

Notes: Marcho Farms and Russian Business Network ane private companies. Those two categories will be fixed at a nominal value until a public traded representative is available. Phillip Morris have undergone considerable reorganization of their tobacco business. The incex has been adapted to reflect the equivalent measure in past times.