{"id":470,"date":"2009-08-04T02:59:10","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T07:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/2009\/08\/04\/what-are-stock-indexes-part-i\/"},"modified":"2009-08-04T02:59:10","modified_gmt":"2009-08-04T07:59:10","slug":"what-are-stock-indexes-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/what-are-stock-indexes-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are Stock Indexes? (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Ahmad Hassam<\/div>\n

There are 100s of ETFs and HOLDRS covering key industry benchmarks such as the various Standard & Poor Indexes, Russell Indexes or the Dow Jones Averages. There are ETFs that cover the other less well known narrow based sectors. <\/p>\n

For example SPY tracks the Standard & Poors 500 Composite Index and is the largest of the ETFs. You should know the major indexes that are either key benchmarks or have ETFs tied to them.<\/p>\n

Standard & Poor: Standard & Poor (S&P) is the financial services segment of the McGraw Hill companies and has been providing independent and objective financial information, analysis and research for nearly 140 years.<\/p>\n

It is also the provider of equity indexes. Investors around the globe use S&P Indexes for investment performance measurement. These indexes are also used as the basis for wide variety of financial instruments such as Index Funds, Futures, Options and ETFs.<\/p>\n

S&P 500 Composite is one of the most popular indexes in the global financial markets. Hundreds of companies around the world have licenses with the Standards & Poors for their index products. The influence and name recognition of S&P 500 is unparalleled. It is also used as a key benchmark for money manager performance. <\/p>\n

S&P 500 represents more than 75% of the capitalization of the entire US Stock Market. The S&P 500 is a capitalization weighted index that tracks the performance of 500 large capitalization issues. Each year thousands of money managers have the single minded goal of outperforming the S&P 500. <\/p>\n

The stocks in the S&P 500 are determined by a nine member committee in accordance with the general guidelines. 30 years back most of the stocks in S&P 500 were from the Industrial Sector. Over the years, the complexion of S&P 500 has changed. By 1970s, six of the top companies were from the Oil Sector. In 2000s, technology composed about one third of the capitalization of the index. <\/p>\n

The other Standard & Poors indexes are the S&P Midcap 400 Index. It measures the performance of the midsize companies of the US economy. It is based on 400 chosen domestic stocks and is also capitalization based. <\/p>\n

S&P SmallCap 600 is also capitalization weighted index and is of interest to institutional and retail investors. The S&P SmallCap 600 Index consists of 600 smallcap domestic stocks and these stocks are chosen for market size and liquidity. There are also sub-indexes based on these S&P Indexes.<\/p>\n

NASDAQ: You will often hear in the media that the Nasdaq market being up or down on a given day. NASDAQ Composite Index contains more than 4500+ companies. It represents a market capitalization of trillions of dollars in the US economy. <\/p>\n

There is another Nasdaq Index called the Nasdaq-100 and it is composed of the top 100 nonfinancial companies in the Nasdaq Stock Market. NASDAQ-100 is a modified capitalization weighted index. The QQQ is based on the Nasdaq-100 Index.<\/p>\n

\n
About the Author:<\/div>\n
Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. He is interested in day trading stocks and forex. Do Penny Stock Trading<\/a>. Learn Forex Trading<\/a>!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are 100s of ETFs and HOLDRS covering key industry benchmarks such as the various Standard & Poor Indexes, Russell Indexes or the Dow Jones Averages. There are ETFs that cover the other less well known narrow based sectors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":735,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/735"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artfieldinvestmentsrdinc.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}