Why are there different market indexes to measure the stock market activity?

Question

How many different indexes are there?

Answer 1

Different firms will create their own indices because there is money to be made on the licensing of your data if it becomes widely adopted. Competing indices between Standard and Poors and Russell in the US are one example.

Answer 2

different people have developed different styles of "reading"

the Stock Market - because if you do well -

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all the best

Answer 3

The simple ans.  Is that the creation of Indexes, allows for grouping of different types of information.  In Canada the TSX index represents the top tier companies and is an indicator of how the market as a whole is doing (moving up/moving down).  It's easier to see this type of movement rather than look through 50-100 stocks at any one time to see if the trend is upwards or downwards.

From there there has been indexes created to "track" similar companies.  Example the resources index follow the trends of resource companies, the Financial Index follows the trends of Financial companies.

For the 2nd part of your question, there are hundreds of Indexes (if you include all Markets) for a list of the go here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sto...

Answer 4

There are literally thousands.  The indexes allow for an individual or an institution to track a group as a whole.

There is an index from the financials to the transports.

There is and index of the Dow to the FTSE (London).

These simply allow investors to gauge how that the markets and sectors are performing as a group compared to individual companies.

Answer 5

Because  there  are  thousands  of  companies  and  

Hundreds  of   industries  so  putting  them  all  in  one  

Would  be  like  a  5th  grade  approach  to  the  market .

It  is  for  grown  ups  who  do  a  lot  of  mathematical  analysis   of    the  various  groups .

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