The range of indices

• Be it the Nikkei in Japan, the CAC40 in France, the HSCEI in China or precisely the DAX: Country indices bring together a country’s most important publicly listed stock corporations.
  
  
• Regional indices, by contrast, do not reflect the trend in a specific country, but in an entire region – such as the EuroStoxx 50, which lists the 50 largest European blue chips.
  
  
• Sector indices group the most important corporations in a particular sector of the economy.
  
  
• Financial service providers compile additional indices. The best known is the MSCI World Index, which features the world’s 1,600 most important companies, from no less than 23 different countries, and thus is a good reflection of global economic sentiment. Moreover, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s publishes its S&P 500, which includes the 500 largest publicly listed companies in America. And there are countless other indices, too.

Invest in a stock index

Depending on whether share prices are heading up or down, stock market indices not only let you gauge how the overall market is faring; they can also serve as an investment vehicle.

• ETFs (exchange-traded funds) enable you to invest in an index in a way that exactly reflects the weighting in it and thus its composition, without having to buy the individual shares.
  
  
• Index certificates also trace different indices.
  
  
• Leveraged and investment products can refer to a stock market index as the underlying asset and offer you very defensive or evenly highly speculative investment opportunities.

At Börse Stuttgart you can buy and sell all these products on any trading day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.