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Stock Market Index
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A stock market index is a method of measuring a stock market as a whole. The market can be Canadian stocks, American stocks, Bio-tech stocks, small-cap stocks, growth stocks, or any other market of interest. Many indices are compiled by news or financial services firms and are used to benchmark the performance of portfolios such as mutual funds.
Mutual funds can give investors access to emerging markets
A mutual fund is a professionally managed firm of collective investments that collects money from many investors and puts it in stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities.[1] The fund manager, also known as portfolio manager, trades the fund's underlying securities, realizing capital gains or losses and passing any proceeds to the individual investors. Today, the worldwide value of all mutual funds totals more than $26 trillion in assets.[2]
Since 1940, there have been three basic types of mutual fund investment companies in the United States. Similar funds also operate in Canada. However, in the rest of the world, mutual fund is used as a generic term for various types of collective investment vehicles, such as unit trusts, open-ended investment companies (OEICs), and unitized insurance funds.