Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index - TMWX

It’s an index. As in index fund. Ticker: W5000.

The Wilshire 5000 had the top 5,000 most highly valued U.S. stocks in it when it launched. By the late '90s, the index had added another 2,500 and changed names as companies split, and as the internet IPO boom forced a whole load of adds to the index.

Then a bunch of bankruptcies in the dotcom era, along with mergers and other financial dietary restrictions, caused the size of the index to fall to the 3,700-name zone, where it sits today.

The Wilshire 5000 (and yeah, we don’t know why they don't rename it the Wilshire 3700-ish either) is distinguished from, say, the S&P 500, in that it covers a much broader range of securities, from mega cap companies like Apple, all the way down to companies with just a few hundred million bucks in market cap.

So when investors want to think about all stocks, or at least the broadest swath, they think Wilshire. And then...a number. But they think Wilshire, anyway. And, uh…we could give you roughly 3,700 reasons why.