Equity Indices

Track the world's equity indexes and earn from their performance

Indices, also known as ‘indexes’, are a group of assets gathered together in order to represent a specific sector of a market. Stock indices give you a chance to trade an opinion of an economy without having to pick individual stocks. With unique benefits to both CFD trading and spread betting, indices are some of the most popular products to trade. The FTSE 100, for example, represents the 100 largest stocks trading on the London Stock Exchange. If those stocks increase in price, the FTSE 100 goes up. If those stocks decrease in price, the FTSE 100 goes down.

An index level is calculated by the consideration of the prices of the various assets that are included in the index; Hence, movement in single stock prices can affect the value of the entire index, as an increase or a decrease. 

The majority of global indices are capitalization-weighted, which means that a company with a higher market cap (or total value on the market) has a greater impact on its index’s price. Because they are purely notional, the only way to trade an index is via a product that mirrors its performance. These products can include index funds, ETFs, futures, CFDs and spread bets.