We sure do love a good collab. 1998 was a fine year. And in 1998, Deutsche Boerse AG, Dow Jones, and the SWX Group released one of the hottest collaborations ever. They called it STOXX. The two x’s make it exxtra hip.
“STOXX” is a family of indexes that track a bunch of global markets, though their main focus is on the European markets. So...how many indexes are we talking? About 9,000, give or take. Nope, not a typo. Nine thousand indexes. Which is a lot.
There are two important things to know about STOXX. First, these indexes cover a ton of different industries, markets, types of securities, etc. Looking for a blue chip index? STOXX has got you. More interested in just checking out environmentally responsible securities? STOXX has got you there, too. Bored of companies and want to invest in an actual country instead? STOXX…yeah, you get it.
The second thing we need to know is that we can actually trade these indexes on options and futures exchanges. They’ve got three different indexes—EURO STOXX 50, STOXX Europe 50, and STOXX Europe 600, which all sound like NASCAR races—that are used as the underlying index for a bunch of futures, options, ETFs, and index funds. So if we’re feeling like our portfolio could use a little European flair, it might be worth introducing ourselves to the STOXX family.
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Finance: What is the S&P 500?45 Views
finance a la shmoop. what is the S&P 500? well the S&P 500 is just an index- that
is the standard and poors company assembled 500 stocks put them on a
spreadsheet- this was a spreadsheet in 1957 -and they tracked them. [spreadsheet pictured]
well the index had something like 37 shares of Procter & Gamble, the 23 shares
of Ford, 18 shares of IBM and so on. in the 1950s the S&P 500 totaled something
like 40 maybe 50 bucks on a good day. at the end of each day the elves who worked
inside of the S&P Factory, they would add up the shares basically ignore any
dividends and send to the press a total which was published to more or less
everyone who cared about investing. well not nearly even a century later the 40 [man reads newspaper]
to $50 reign to the SNP is today knock on the door of 2,500 .so without even
having dividends reinvested you'd have made 50 times your money with dividends
reinvested to buy more shares instead of keeping the cash to buy you know
groceries or electric massage slippers. you'd have made over 70 times your [grocery display case and slippers pictured]
original investment. welcome to America.
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