Standard & Poor's 500 Index was compiled by Standard & Poor's Company in 1957. The initial constituent stocks include 425 industrial stocks, 15 railway stocks and 60 public utility stocks. From 1 June 65438+July1,its constituent stocks were changed to 400 industrial stocks, 20 transportation stocks, 40 public utilities stocks and 40 financial stocks. It takes 194 1 year to 1942 as the base period, and the index of the base period is set to 10, which is calculated by the weighted average method, with the listed amount of the stock as the weight, and the weighted calculation is carried out according to the base period.

Compared with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index has the characteristics of wide sampling area, strong representativeness, high accuracy and good continuity, and is generally regarded as the ideal target of stock index futures contracts.

The increase and decrease principle of index constituent stocks can be S& as the essence of index. On the premise of retaining 500 constituent stocks, S& will keep increasing and decreasing the P500 index.

There are six considerations for increasing individual stocks:

1. Market value-due to S&; P500 is a market value weighted index, so the market value of a single company in its industrial field becomes the first consideration.

2. Industry-consider whether industry plays an important role in the American economic system.

3. Capitalization-analyze the degree of stock circulation outside to avoid being manipulated by a few groups.

4. Trading-analyze the daily, monthly and annual trading liquidity of individual stocks and the normal efficiency of stock prices.

5. Basic analysis-tracking the company's financial and operating conditions to keep the index stable and minimize changes.

6. Emerging industries-if there are new industries that are not in the original classification, but their conditions meet the above five standards, they can consider joining.

Four factors should be considered in reducing the holdings of constituent stocks:

1. merger-after the company is merged, the merged company is naturally excluded from the index.

2. Bankruptcy-The company declares bankruptcy.

3. Transformation-Company transformation is meaningless in the original industry classification.

4. Not representative-replaced by other companies in the same industry.

Standard & Poor's. P500 index futures are based on S&; The contract with the P500 index as the subject matter is one of the most recognized stock index futures commodities in the United States. However, due to the high total contract amount, the willingness of ordinary investors to participate is limited. Therefore, on September 9th, 1998, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched the Mini S&; P500 index futures make it more universal. Mini S& ampP500 futures are still based on S&; The target is the P500 index, but the contract value is doubled from $250 to $50 by index futures, and its trading mode is mainly electronic trading.