LQ45 vs the Rest of the IDX: Does Blue Chip Actually Mean Less Risk?
6 min read
Loading...
6 min read
If you built your Indonesian stock portfolio around LQ45, the 45 largest and most liquid names on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (BEI), because they felt like the safer choice, here is a number worth sitting with. Through 28 July 2026, LQ45 was down 27.85% for the year (Bloomberg Technoz). The IHSG, the whole market, all 900-plus listed companies, was down about 29.09% over the same stretch. Blue chip barely cushioned the fall.
That is the real test of LQ45 vs non-LQ45 risk: not what the label implies, but what the index numbers actually did in a good year and a bad one. This article checks that using only published IDX figures.
LQ45's own methodology is public. To qualify, a stock has to rank in the top 60 companies by market capitalisation and the top 60 by trading value over the trailing 12 months, be listed on the IDX for at least three months, keep a minimum 10% free float, and pass a general check on financial condition and growth prospects (IDX's own LQ45 methodology document; Indonesia-Investments). The 45 constituents are reviewed twice a year, effective every February and August, and no single stock's weight can exceed 15% at each review.
2025 was a strong year for Indonesian stocks overall, and LQ45 barely showed up for it.
| Index | 2025 full-year return |
|---|---|
| LQ45 (blue chip) | +2.41% |
| IHSG (whole market) | +22.13% |
| IDX SMC Composite (small and mid cap) | +57.28% |
Source: Bisnis.com, "Kalahkan Big Caps, Saham Lapis Dua IDX SMC Liquid Siap Uji Ketahanan di 2026," 19 December 2025, cross-checked against a second independent report giving the same three figures.
If you had held the 45 biggest, most liquid names in Indonesia through 2025 expecting them to at least track the market, you captured barely a tenth of what the IHSG itself returned, and a fraction of what small and mid cap stocks did. "Safer" cost you almost the entire rally.
2026 flipped the script. A rupiah crisis, a balance-of-payments deficit and heavy foreign outflows dragged the whole market down (see NetWort's Macro page for the current picture). LQ45, IHSG and small and mid caps all fell, but not by the same amount, and not in the order the "blue chip is safer" story would predict.
| Index | 2026 YTD return |
|---|---|
| LQ45 | -27.85% (as of 28 Jul 2026) |
| IHSG | -29.09%* (as of 28 Jul 2026) |
| IDX SMC Composite | -23.9% (as of 17 Jul 2026) |
*IHSG's figure is self-derived from its own sourced closes: 8,646.94 on 30 December 2025 (Antara News) and 6,130.58 on 28 July 2026 (Kompas.com). The IDX SMC Composite figure is dated 17 July 2026 (KB Valbury Daily Economic Research), about eleven days earlier than the other two, since a matching late-July figure could not be sourced.
Here is the same three numbers, chained together and turned into rupiah. This is a self-derived calculation, not a real fund's track record: it applies each index's own sourced 2025 return, then its own sourced 2026 year-to-date return, to a starting balance of Rp10,000,000 on 1 January 2025.
| Path | End of 2025 | Through late July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| LQ45 | Rp10,241,000 | ≈ Rp7,389,000 |
| IHSG | Rp12,213,000 | ≈ Rp8,660,000 |
| IDX SMC Composite | Rp15,728,000 | ≈ Rp11,969,000 |
Nineteen months in, the "safe" blue chip basket is the only one of the three still underwater against its starting balance. The small and mid cap basket, despite falling hard in its own right in 2026, is still up on where it started.
By 28 July 2026, just nine of LQ45's 45 constituents showed a positive return since the start of the year. The best two were ADRO, now branded Alamtri Resources Indonesia (formerly Adaro Energy Indonesia), up 43.79%, and AADI, Adaro Andalan Indonesia, up 35.42% (Bloomberg Technoz). The other 36 constituents were in the red, some far more than the index's own -27.85% average. You can check ADRO's own price and volatility numbers directly rather than taking any single headline return at face value.
LQ45's own line-up just changed again. In the rebalance effective 3 August 2026, Indika Energy (INDY) and Trimegah Bangun Persada (NCKL) joined the index, replacing Semen Indonesia (SMGR) and Sarana Menara Nusantara (TOWR), entering with weights of just 0.25% and 0.46% respectively (Liputan6; TradingView/Kontan). That swap is about liquidity and market cap ranking shifting, not about SMGR or TOWR suddenly becoming riskier businesses.
Sometimes the removal reason is sharper. Barito Renewables Energy (BREN) and Dian Swastatika Sentosa (DSSA) were dropped from LQ45 and IDX80 in April 2026 specifically because BEI and KSEI flagged them on a new High Shareholding Concentration list, not because of ordinary price risk. The full story, including BREN's 97.31% ownership concentration, is in NetWort's piece on IHSG concentration risk. The takeaway holds either way: being in LQ45 today says nothing certain about being in LQ45, or about being lower risk, a year from now.
"Blue chip" is a label about liquidity and size. Volatility and maximum drawdown are the two numbers that actually describe how much a stock's price swings, and they vary enormously within LQ45 itself: a bank, a coal miner and a telecom carrier all sit in the same index under the same label, and behave nothing alike.
Before assuming any stock is safer because it happens to be one of the 45, open its own page. Browse the full list on NetWort's Tickers directory, then check any stock's actual volatility and maximum drawdown on its own asset page, the numbers that would have told you LQ45's 2025 and 2026 story well before the index-level totals did.