In developing his model portfolio, Neil Macneale selects only one stock a month - and each stock is chosen exclusively from among those that have announced upcoming stock splits. Here, the editor of 2-for-1 kicks off his 21st year of publication.

The new additions to our portfolio this month is Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which operates numerous securities exchanges around the world, including the New York Stock Exchange, the largest in the world.

The consolidation of the various securities and commodity exchanges over the past decade has been dramatic and ICE is clearly the 800- pound gorilla in this business.

There were no split announcements in July but, on August 3, ICE announced it's intent to issue a 5-to-1 stock split, pending stockholder and SEC approval.

While not a formal declaration of the actual split, this announcement qualifies ICE for 2 for 1 eligibility, in that the signal of the board's confidence in future positive performance is abundantly clear.

I then compared ICE to the five May split announcements and its numbers were impressive.

Factors boosting the total score include strong growth in revenue, earnings, and free cash flow, somewhat mitigating a higher than average PE ratio.

High profitability, lower than average volatility and a respectable dividend are also very attractive.

As the world's economy becomes more and more intertwined, operating a safe, efficient and transparent trading platform for our various financial instruments will be critical to maintaining trust in our financial infrastructure.

ICE would appear to be in the best position to lead that effort and will be added to the portfolio and 2 for 1 Index next week.

For full disclosure, please note that my firm, Neil Macneale Inc., has a signed agreement with the NYSE to calculate and publish the intraday and daily closing values of the 2 for 1 Index. This information can be found at nyse.com/quote/index/splits.

This-agreement has been in effect since 12/1/2014. It's hard to imagine where there might be a conflict of interest here, but I thought you should know.

Subscribe to 2-for-1 here.

By Neil Macneale, Editor of 2-for-1