What Are the Three Major Stock Indexes?
The three most widely followed indexes in the U.S. are the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq Composite.
- The Standard and Poor's 500 Index is an index of 500 large cap common stocks that represent all different sectors of the market.
- The NASDAQ 100 index is the third major stock index. This index is composed of the largest 100 companies that trade on the NASDAQ exchange excluding financials.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a stock market index that tracks 30 large, publicly-owned blue-chip companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq.
144
1.49K reads
CURATED FROM
IDEAS CURATED BY
The idea is part of this collection:
Learn more about moneyandinvestments with this collection
How to manage risk
How to analyze investment opportunities
The importance of long-term planning
Related collections
Similar ideas to What Are the Three Major Stock Indexes?
Performance of the Nasdaq indexes
Nasdaq's indexes have outperformed the S&P 500 (it tracks large-cap stocks), and the Dow Jones Industrial Index (the 30 largest US companies).
It outperformed because both Nasdaq indexes lean heavily into tech, consumer services, and health care - the top-performing industries in recent ye...
1. Pick an index
There are hundreds of different indexes you can track using index funds. The most popular index is the S&P 500 Index
Here's a short list of some additional top indexes, broken down by what part of the market they cover:
- Large U.S. stocks: S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Na...
Trading ETFs (exchange-traded fund")
An index is simply a collection (or "basket") of stocks. An ETF allows trading an index just like a stock. The best-known indexes are:
- S&P 500 (trading as SPY): the 500 U.S. stocks with the largest market caps
- Dow Jones Industrial Average (tra...
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates