When reading markets information, we see that indices are moving constantly. A lot of them are experiencing a bad time and brokers are constantly talking about the recovery. But what are indices and is it possible for us to invest in them? Let’s find out!
An index is an imaginary portfolio that consists of several securities which in their turn represent a certain market or a portion of a certain market. Indices have become synonymous with the overall performance of the markets. The most popular indices are S&P 500, Nasdaq, Dow Jones Industrial Average, MSCI Asia Pacific and MSCI Emerging Market.
And although technically it is impossible for you to buy an index or its portions, as those are just the benchmarks, it is possible for you to use them in order to better understand the performance in the market.
One of the ways to implement the index to your own good is indexing. In order to implement this way into life one is going to need a lot of partners, as it costs quite a lot – to keep the index afloat. Indexing is essentially creating a portfolio consisting of several securities. Changes in the stocks’ and securities’ performance are going to be reflected in the performance of the index. But the index itself is going to need to be maintained and adjusted. And that can be real costly.
Now, what you can trade if there is such a wish is index’ ETFs. ETFs are, just the indices itself represent the full performance of the securities in the index. But, just like those securities and like regular bonds they can be traded in the market. The price of the ETFs is the reflection of the net asset value where all of the underlying securities are taken into account.
