Indices: S&P 500, Nasdaq, IBEX…
An index is a basket of companies that sums up how a market is doing. When the news says “the stock market is up”, it means an index.
S&P 500The 500 biggest US companies. The most-watched index in the world.
Nasdaq 100The 100 biggest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq, mostly tech: Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft…
Dow Jones30 historic US companies. The oldest one.
IBEX 35The 35 most traded companies in Spain.
DAX, CAC 40, FTSE 100Germany, France and the UK.
VIXThe “fear index”. When it rises a lot, the market is nervous.
You can’t buy an index directly, but you can buy an index fund or ETF that copies it (you’ll see this later).
In Stocks → Heatmap you can see at a glance how every company in an index is doing: green is up, red is down, and the size of each box is how big the company is.