The Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones, or simply the Dow, is a price-weighted measurement stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. Although the DJIA is one of the oldest and the most commonly followed equity indices, many professionals consider the Dow to be an inadequate representation of the overall U.S. stock market compared to broader market indices such as the S&P 500 or Russell 2000 Index. The DJIA includes only 30 large companies and is a price-weighted index, unlike later stock indices which use market capitalization. Furthermore, the DJIA does not use a weighted arithmetic mean. The value of the index is the sum of the stock prices of the companies included in the index, divided by a factor which is currently approximately 0.152. The factor is changed whenever a constituent company undergoes a stock split so that the value of the index is unaffected by the stock split. First calculated on May 26, 1896, the index is the second-oldest among the U.S. market indices.
The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. As of December 31, 2020, more than $5.4 trillion was invested in assets tied to the performance of the index. The S&P 500 index is a free-float weighted/capitalization-weighted index. As of September 30, 2021, the nine largest companies on the list of S&P 500 companies accounted for 28.1% of the market capitalization of the index and were, in order of weighting, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon.com, Facebook, Tesla, Nvidia, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. The components that have increased their dividends in 25 consecutive years are known as the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats. In 2017, companies in the index derived on average 72% of their revenue in the United States. The index is one of the factors in computation of the Conference Board Leading Economic Index, used to forecast the direction of the economy. The index is associated with many ticker symbols, including ^GSPC, INX, and $SPX, depending on market or website.
The Nasdaq Composite is a stock market index that includes almost all stocks listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500, it is one of the three most-followed stock market indices in the United States. The composition of the NASDAQ Composite is heavily weighted towards companies in the information technology sector. The Nasdaq-100, which includes 100 of the largest non-financial companies in the Nasdaq Composite, accounts for over 90% of the movement of the Nasdaq Composite. The Nasdaq Composite is a capitalization-weighted index; its price is calculated by taking the sum of the products of closing price and index share of all of the securities in the index. The sum is then divided by a divisor which reduces the order of magnitude of the result.
The Russell 2000 Index is a small-cap stock market index that makes up the smallest 2,000 stocks in the Russell 3000 Index. It was started by the Frank Russell Company in 1984. The index is maintained by FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group.
VIX is the ticker symbol and the popular name for the Chicago Board Options Exchange's CBOE Volatility Index, a popular measure of the stock market's expectation of volatility based on S&P 500 index options. It is calculated and disseminated on a real-time basis by the CBOE, and is often referred to as the fear index or fear gauge. The VIX traces its origin to the financial economics research of Menachem Brenner and Dan Galai. In a series of papers beginning in 1989, Brenner and Galai proposed the creation of a series of volatility indices, beginning with an index on stock market volatility, and moving to interest rate and foreign exchange rate volatility. In their papers, Brenner and Galai proposed, "[the] volatility index, to be named 'Sigma Index', would be updated frequently and used as the underlying asset for futures and options. ... A volatility index would play the same role as the market index plays for options and futures on the index." In 1992, the CBOE hired consultant Bob Whaley to calculate values for stock market volatility based on this theoretical work.
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