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Stock Index Funds

You may have heard of the term before, financial indexes, but just what exactly are they. Indexes, also known as stock market indexes, are the istings of stocks and any statistics that show a full of value of any given stock in the index. These indexes are generally used to show the character of all the stocks taken together. These characteristics can include trading on the same market, belonging to the same industry or even market capitalizations that are the same or similar. Very often these stock market measurements are used as benchmarks in portfolios known as mutual funds. There are funds out there that contain the securities that are part of a given index. Not surprisingly, these funds are called index funds. There are a few different ways to categorize financial indexes. They can be known as broad-base indexes for example. This generally is a reflection of the entire stock market and is a reflection of the investors sentiment about the economy. A lot of the common indexes mentioned are broad-based indexes. These include but are not limited to the American Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 Index. - On the other hand there are many others that are considered specialized indexes. The difference is that the specialized ones only track certain segments of the market. Examples of these types of financials include the Morgan Stanley Biotech Index or the Linux Weekly News. These can track different aspects such as companies of a certain size or with certain types of management. The Linux Weekly News tracks companies that use or sell products or even services that have their basis in the Linux operating system. Morgan Stanley Biotech (MVB) as the name suggests tracks a group of companies from the biotech sector.