Indices, or indexes as they are also known, are resources which are grouped together; either representing a specific division of a market or the entire market itself. A the general level of a stock market index is calculated by considering the actual prices of all the different resources within the index; this implies that shifts in specific stock prices will make the value of the index to go up or go down.
The most major economies (and a lot of economies, currently developing) have at least one financial index which groups together a series of resources. Major indices include:
The various stock exchanges centre on various stock types. Part of the indices are specifically global (such as the S&P Global 100) and other indices are national, listing only companies which are native to the respective country. Some other indices have only a specific business division in focus, e.g. the NASDAQ index includes only tech stocks.
Still, some multinational corporations exist, and they are tradable on many indices; usually both a national index and an international index. Alibaba.com, for instance, can be traded both on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index and the New York Stock Exchange (after a highly publicised IPO last year). Similar to the above, the Credit Suisse can be traded both on the Zurich-based Swiss Market Index and the New York Stock Exchange. Some financial indices are tradable either in ‘Rolling Daily’ or ‘Futures’ formats, which means that these can be traded at their actual price or at a price, which is greed on now for an option which will close automatically on a specific date.
You can definitely trade individual stocks (see our equities section for more details) with us, but it’s also possible to trade an index as a single entity, purchasing if you consider stocks on the index will generally go up, or if you if think that on average they will go down. It’s essentially a way to trade the bigger picture in the financial markets.
Our company offer a large range of different indices for customers to trade, with 20 different indices available on the SwissMKT platform and multiple options on the company’s MT4 platform as well. If you already created an account, just login and start trading. If you intend to open an account with us, click here to go through our quick and easy sign-up process.
