Wilshire 5000

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The Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index or simply the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 is a broad based stock market index often used to represent the entire United States stock market. It measures the performance of all public companies based in the United States with "readily available price data"; that is, the value of common stock, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and limited partnerships of companies whose primary stock market listing is on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, or American Stock Exchange.

The Wilshire 5000 is a market capitalization-weighted index, meaning price change in its components are factored against the total market capitalization of those components. Dow Jones publishes both an index based on full market capitalization and also one based on a float-adjusted market capitalization, reflecting the number of shares actually available to trade. The list of securities is updated monthly to add new listings for corporate spin-offs and initial public offerings, and to remove companies which move to the pink sheets or stop trading for ten days.

The index was created by Wilshire Associates in 1974 and named for the approximate number of issues it included at that time. It was renamed the "Dow Jones Wilshire 5000" after the Dow Jones & Company took over responsibility for its calculation and maintenance in April 2004. Point values, multiplied by one million dollars, are roughly equal to the total U.S. market capitalization. The Wilshire 5000 reached an all-time intra-day high of 14,804.74 and a record close of 14,796.54 on February 20, 2007, surpassing its previous highs reached on March 24, 2000. It is interesting to note that a total market investment at the 2000 peak, if all dividends were immediately re-invested when issued, had already become profitable on a closing basis October 3, 2006 [1], the day that the narrower but better-known Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassed its former all-time nominal high.

[edit] External links

• Official page at Wilshire Associates website
• Yahoo! Finance page for ^DWC