The World is Watching and Wants to know, Who is America Now? Stock index futures were little changed Tuesday night after Democrat Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency. The uncertainty over who will guide the world’s largest economy is now over. A rise in stock index futures suggest on Wednesday Wall Street may build on yesterday’s rally, the biggest ever for an Election Day in the USA. May believe that the Barack Obama’s win is factored in.
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Wilshire Total Maket Index
The Wilshire 5000 Equity Index, often referred to as the Wilshire Total Market Index, is probably the largest stock Index in the world. Wilshire Associates stated out in 1980 tracking 5000 stocks. Since then the Wilshire 5000 has ballooned to cover more than 7000 stocks. The advantage of the Wilshire 5000 is that it’s very comprehensive, covering nearly the entire market. For investors and anlaysts that seek the greatest representation performance of the general market, they would check out this index. (At the very least, the Wilshire 5000 tracks the largest publicly traded stocks.) It includes all the stocks that are on the major stock exchange (NYSE, AMEX, and the largest issue on NASDAQ) which by default also include all the stock covered by the S&P 500. The Wilshire 5000 is a market-value weighted index.
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Standard & Poor’s 500
The Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) tracks the 500 largest (measured by market value) publicly trade companies. The publishing firm Standard & Poor’s created this index. (I bet you could have guess that.) Because it contains 500 companies, the S&P 500 represents overall market performance better than the DJIA’s 30 companies. Money managers and financial advisors actually watch the S&P 500 stock index more closely than the DJIA. Most mutual funds especially like to measure their performance against the S&P 500 rather than against any other index. Mutual funds that concentrate on small-cap stocks usally prefer on index that has more small-cap stock in it, such as the Russell 2000.
The S&P 500 doesn’t attempt to cover the 500 “biggest” companies. Instead, it includes companies that are widely held and widely followed. The companies are also industry leaders in variety of industries, including energy, technology, healthcare, and finance. It’s a maket value weighted index.
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