The S&P 500 index is one of the most tracked indexes in the world and it consists of 500 Large-Cap publicly traded corporations. Majority of these companies are American largest public companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq Exchange. The S&P 500 index is considered as the best index that describes the U.S stock market sentiment by those investors who uses index technical analysis to track the market trend. The S&P 500 index started to be calculated in 1923. Yet, at that time only 423 companies were included into the index and due to the complex calculations this index was calculated and published on a weekly basis only. Smaller S&P 90 index (90 companies) was calculated and published on a daily basis after the market closes. In the 60’s the computer development made it possible to perform the complex calculations in real time and on March 1957 the S&P 500 was officially introduced to the world and started to be tracked in real time.Opposing to the big indexes such as Russell 2000 the S&P 500 companies are selected by the committee by certain criteria. The main criteria are that the company has to be large and publicly traded on the NYSE or the NASDAQ, the company has to represent one of the branches of the U.S. economy and the companies' shares have to be quite liquid and available on the stock market.The S&P 500 index ticker symbol is (^SPX). You may find the real time S&P 500 quotes including volume advance decline issues, advance decline volume, new highs and new lows athttp://www.marketvolume.com/content/products/mktsum/mb_mktsum_index_quotes.asp?ind=27With introducing of the ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), with development of the options and futures markets, the traders have various ways of investing into the S&P 500 index besides buying shares of the companies from the basket of the index. One of the most popular ways of investing into the index is trading the ETFs. The Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts (SPDRs) is Exchange trade Funds that track the S&P 500 index. The SPDRs is a traded under the SPY ticker and called as S&P 500 index tracking stock.Another popular, yet more risky" way of investing into the S&P 500 index is to trade the options on the S&P 500, SPY options, S&P 500 e-mini futures.The most popular S&P 500 index tracking funds are Rydex and ProFunds funds. They have become very popular among IRA investors, because they allow using pension funds to trade bear market and to leverage the investment.
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