Introduction to equity indices. Now, equity indices take many forms but the formal definition is an aggregate of statistical values formed by having a grouping of securities that are priced to a base value at a specific date. So it's a group of securities combined together so that we can get a sense of price appreciation or total return appreciation over a specific time period. Now, as I mentioned, they take many forms and can be categorized in a handful of different ways. First, we'll look at the dominant US equity indices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, probably one of the first indexes ever created and it's still used today. The S&P 500, while not the oldest index, it's probably the most widely followed and it has the most amount of money pegged to its performance in terms of asset managers using the index as a benchmark. The NASDAQ Composite, traditionally known as a tech benchmark, technology benchmark, not so much today, but still widely followed. And the Russell 2000 index is used to monitor the performance of small cap and mid-cap stocks here in the US. Now, of course, indices aren't limited to the US. There are a handful of widely followed international indices. The FTSE 100, which is tracking companies in the UK. The DAX, as it's known. A German index. The Hang Seng, of course, from Hong Kong. And the Nikkei index, which is following Japanese equities. Now, while indices are used to track the overall movement and performance of various securities markets, as we just mentioned, with our US and international classification, they can also be used to track and segment various asset classes, sectors, industries, or market segments. In the first example are sector or industry-specific indices and may represent and track different economic sectors, such as consumer goods, energy, finance, health care, technology on either a national, a regional, or even a global basis. Now, these type of indexes can drill down further down to the either industry or sub-industry level. The regional banking index here in the US is an example. Next, style specific indexes. The the most widely known and used are value indexes or growth indexes that you would see quoted by many of the index providers. Total return indexes. Now, while most of the quotes that you would see for the Dow Jones and the S&P and the Nasdaq, et cetera, are price return indexes, there's also variations of those indexes that take into account dividends paid into their calculations. And those are known as total return indexes. And multi-market indexes, which includes, as you would guess, multiple markets. So multiple countries, multiple asset classes, multiple industries, et cetera. Now, indices can be calculated in various different ways, either market valuated, price weighted, equally weighted, fundamentally weighted. And they all have their benefits and disadvantages, but it's important to know how each index is calculated.