The Standard and Poor's 500,[1] or sometimes known as the S&P 500,[2] is something that measures the stock market, looking at how well 500 of the largest companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States are doing. It is one of the most commonly used ways of looking at stocks for these companies. There is over $4.6 trillion invested in the companies that use how well companies are doing to know when to invest.[1]
Included companies
The 10 largest companies in the index are responsible for 26.4% of the tied investments. The 10 largest companies in the S&P 500, in order of size, are Apple Inc., Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook, Alphabet Inc. (class A & C), Tesla, Inc., Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, and Johnson & Johnson.[1] For a list of companies in the S&P 500, see List of S&P 500 companies.[3]: 25
Index funds that look at how well the S&P 500 are doing have been suggested as things to invest in by Warren Buffett, Burton Malkiel, and John C. Bogle for investors with long time horizons.[4]
Although the S&P 500 includes only companies that are available to be sold in stocks in the United States, companies in the S&P 500 on average only get 72% of their money from the United States.[5]
Usage
The S&P 500 is one of the ways used to calculate the Conference Board Leading Economic Index, used to predict if the economy will do better or worse in the future.[6]
It is associated with many ticker symbols, including: ^GSPC,[7] INX,[8] and $SPX, but this changes by market or website.[9] The index value is updated every 15 seconds, or 1,559 times per trading day, with price updates updated with help from Reuters.[10]
Management
The S&P 500 is kept up-to-date by S&P Dow Jones Indices, a joint venture mostly owned by S&P Global[11][12]
References
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