S&P 500 Index
S&P 500 Index from 1950 to 2016
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| Foundation | March 4, 1957 |
|---|---|
| Operator | S&P Dow Jones Indices |
| , NASDAQ | |
| Constituents | 505 |
| Type | Large-cap |
| Market cap | US$20.6 trillion (as of January 31, 2017) |
| Weighting method | Free-float capitalization-weighted |
| Related indices | |
| Website | us |
The Standard & Poor's 500, often abbreviated as the S&P 500, or just "the S&P", is an American based on the market capitalizations of 500 large companies having common stock listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ. The S&P 500 index components and their weightings are determined by S&P Dow Jones Indices. It differs from other U.S. stock market indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Nasdaq Composite index, because of its diverse constituency and . It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices, and many consider it one of the best representations of the U.S. stock market, and a bellwether for the U.S. economy. The National Bureau of Economic Research has classified common stocks as a leading indicator of business cycles.
The S&P 500 was developed and continued to be maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, a joint venture majority-owned by S&P Global. S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes many stock market indices such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P MidCap 400, the S&P SmallCap 600, and the S&P Composite 1500. It is a free-float capitalization-weighted index, and has many ticker symbols, such as: ^GSPC, INX, and $SPX.
The "Composite Index", as the S&P 500 was first called when it introduced its first in 1923, began tracking a small number of stocks. Three years later in 1926, the Composite Index expanded to 90 stocks and then in 1957 it expanded to its current 500.Standard & Poor's, a company that doles out financial information and analysis, was founded in 1860 by Henry Varnum Poor. In 1941 Poor's Publishing (Henry Varnum Poor's original company) merged with Standard Statistics (founded in 1906 as the Standard Statistics Bureau) and therein assumed the name Standard and Poor's Corporation. The S&P 500 index in its present form began on March 4, 1957. Technology has allowed the index to be calculated and disseminated in real time. The S&P 500 is widely used as a measure of the general level of stock prices, as it includes both and .
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