What is the nasdaq index?

The NASDAQ index was launched in 1971 with a starting value of 100. Over the years, the index has grown tremendously despite many periods of decline.

NASDAQ (tick symbol IXIC) is a stock market index of common stocks and similar securities (monitor stock) listed on Nasdaq. Along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500, it is one of the three most watched indices on US stock markets. The composition of the NASDAQ Composite is of great importance to IT companies. The NASDAQ-100, whose components are a subset of the NASDAQ Composite, accounts for over 90% of NASDAQ Composite's traffic, and many ETFs track its performance. The composite itself is calculated by taking into account the sum of the product of the closing price and the share of the index (calculated by capitalization) of all over 2,500 securities in the index. The sum is then divided by a divisor, which only serves to reduce the order of magnitude of the result.

Nasdaq is a global electronic marketplace for buying and selling securities. Nasdaq was created by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) to allow investors to trade securities in a computerized, fast and transparent system, and began operations on February 8, 1971. The term "Nasdaq" is also used to refer to the Nasdaq Composite, an index of over 3,000 Nasdaq-listed stocks that includes the world's top tech and biotech giants such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, and Intel.

Nasdaq officially split from the NASD and began operating as a national stock exchange in 2006. In 2007, it merged with the Scandinavian exchange group OMX to become the Nasdaq OMX group, which is the largest publicly traded company in the world, powering 1 in 10 of the world's securities transactions.

Headquartered in New York, Nasdaq OMX serves 25 markets - primarily equities, as well as options, derivatives and commodities - plus one clearing house and five central securities depositories in the US and Europe. Its state-of-the-art trading technology is used by 70 exchanges in 50 countries. It is listed on Nasdaq under the symbol NDAQ and has been part of the S&P 500 since 2008.

The Nasdaq computerized trading system was initially created as an alternative to the inefficient "specialist" system that had been the dominant model for nearly a century. The rapid evolution of technology has made Nasdaq's electronic trading model the standard for markets around the world.