The Standard & Poor's 500 is a U.S. stock market index that's based on 500 major companies in the U.S. If you want to know how the U.S. stock market is doing, check the S&P 500. It's "the market," more or less, even though the popular financial press quotes the Dow (which is just the top 30 largest American firms). The Dow was highly relevant when there were 500 public companies in the world, 100 years ago. Today, eh, not all that representative anymore of the broader market.
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Finance: What are the Differences in S&P...27 Views
finance a la shmoop what are the differences in S&P's, and Moody's
ratings? capital letters. really that's about it the assessment of the rating
itself is about the same. the people work at both companies all came from about [grinning men walk in front of a school]
the same schools the same semi diversified backgrounds and well they
all eat the same white bread. note the nomenclature differences here though.
Moody's does in fact look kind of moody with a big fat capital letter in the
beginning followed by small letters and slightly different notations. the S&P is
all in caps all shouting all the time. the metrics behind say a quote highly [chart shown]
speculative bond unquote down here are about the same for both companies but
the slight differences are worth noting so that when you see a rating well you
know just by the way in which it's written who wrote it.
now as for actually understanding bond ratings well that's a different story. to [document shown]
most people they might as well be hieroglyphics. [confused woman reads paper]
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What is the S&P 500? It's Standard & Poor's 500 generally largest companies, with a U.S. domestic bias. The S&P 500 is usually what investors think...