| Subject: The S&P 500 index in its present form began on March 4, 1957. |
Author:
Spring
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Date Posted: 26/11/10 1:51:39
History
Standard & Poor's introduced its first stock index in 1923. Before 1957, its primary daily stock market index was the "S&P 90," a value weighted index based on 90 stocks. Standard & Poor's also published a weekly index of 423 companies. The S&P 500 index in its present form began on March 4, 1957. Thanks to the computer technology emerging at the time, this index could be calculated and disseminated in real time. The S&P 500 is widely employed as a measure of the general level of stock prices, as it includes both growth stocks and the generally less volatile value stocks.
The index reached an all-time intraday high of 1,552.87 in trading on March 24, 2000 during the dot-com bubble, and then lost approximately 50% of its value in a two-year bear market, spiking below 800 points in July 2002 and reaching a low of 768.63 intraday on October 10, 2002 during the stock market downturn of 2002. The S&P 500 remained below its year 2000 all-time high somewhat longer than the popular Dow Jones Industrial Average and the more comprehensive Wilshire 5000. However, on May 30, 2007, the S&P 500 closed at 1,530.23 to set its first all-time closing high in more than seven years. The highest point reached was 1,565.15 on October 9, 2007.
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