title: "Helsinki Stock Exchange: OMXH25 and Finnish Equities" description: "Nasdaq Helsinki explained: OMXH25 index, top Finnish stocks, trading hours, dividend culture, and how to trade Finnish equities as an international investor." category: Guides author: "NordTraders Editorial" date: "2026-07-30" tags: [helsinki, finland, omxh25, nordic] word_count: 620
Helsinki is the smallest of the four main Nordic exchanges but it punches above its weight. Finnish companies tend to pay dividends reliably, and the market rewards patience more than most.
The OMXH25 Index
The OMX Helsinki 25 tracks the 25 most traded stocks on Nasdaq Helsinki. It is a market cap weighted index, rebalanced twice a year, with a 10% single stock cap.
Heavyweight names dominate. The top five typically make up over half the index by weight. Nokia alone used to be a third of the market. Now it is closer to 15% because the index added a concentration cap in 2017.
Other names that matter: KONE (elevators, escalators), Sampo (insurance), Nordea (banking, listed in Helsinki alongside Stockholm and Copenhagen), Neste (renewable diesel, refining), and UPM-Kymmene (forestry, paper, biofuels).
What Makes Helsinki Different
Liquidity is thinner than Stockholm or Copenhagen. Some OMXH25 names trade only a few hundred thousand euros on an average day. The index itself has about 4 billion euros in daily turnover — less than a third of what the OMXS30 does.
That matters for exit. A position that takes seconds to fill in Stockholm might take minutes to unwind in Helsinki. Limit orders are not optional.
The Finnish market also leans industrial. Forestry, machinery, shipping, and metals make up a bigger share than in Sweden or Denmark, where financials and healthcare are heavier. If you already own OMXS30 exposure through banks and industrials, adding OMXH25 gives you a different tilt.
Dividends and Withholding
Finnish companies pay dividends once a year, usually in March or April. The general withholding rate is 30% on dividends to non-residents, but treaties bring that down. A Danish investor can reclaim most of it. A US investor using an IRA gets hit with the full rate because Finland does not recognize US retirement accounts.
The market is also more concentrated in a few dividend payers. Fortum, UPM, and Nordea tend to account for a big slice of the total dividend pool each year. If you are hunting yield specifically, Finland has names worth looking at, but you need to check the withholding math.
Trading Hours
Helsinki follows the same schedule as other Nordic markets: continuous trading from 10:00 to 18:30 EET (UTC+2 winter, UTC+3 summer). There is an opening auction from 9:45 to 10:00 and a closing auction starting at 18:30.
The first and last 30 minutes are the most liquid. If you are placing a larger order in a mid-cap name, aim for those windows. Midday in Helsinki can be very quiet, especially during July when much of the country is on summer holiday.
Currency
Finland uses the euro. For international investors, that means the currency exposure is shared with other eurozone markets like the Netherlands, Germany, and France, but not with Sweden or Norway. If you are holding positions in both OMXS30 and OMXH25, your currency risk splits between SEK and EUR.
How NordTraders Fits
The scanner treats Helsinki the same way it treats Copenhagen and Oslo. It runs the same filters on OMXH25 names and publishes only when something passes. That means Helsinki shows up less often than Stockholm in the morning run, but that is just the market being what it is. A quiet day in Helsinki is not a broken filter.