indexing

noun

in·dex·ing | \ ˈin-ˌdek-siŋ

Definition of indexing

: indexation

Examples of indexing in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Toll opponents have said that even a small toll will be increased either through indexing or other means. — al, "Byrne calls for I-10 project ‘pause’ until ‘people can be heard’," 12 Aug. 2019 Google is having indexing issues today, meaning that some new content across the internet is not showing up in search results. — Jay Peters, The Verge, "Google search isn’t showing new content due to indexing issues," 8 Aug. 2019 And though Google stopped indexing 8chan back in 2015, taking some wind out of its sails, the site has still managed to become a go-to for hate speech of all sorts and, of late, mass shooters spreading their extremist propaganda. — Lily Hay Newman, WIRED, "Cloudflare Ditches 8chan. What Happens Now?," 5 Aug. 2019 Some indexing firms that rely on third-party ESG data providers aren’t having trouble attracting new money from clients. — Britton O’daly, WSJ, "Beleaguered Money Managers Find Bright Spot in ESG," 11 July 2019 Active managers have long argued that volatility would help them gain ground on their indexing rivals. — Dawn Lim, WSJ, "ETFs, Mutual Funds See Sudden Drop in Money Flowing In," 26 Dec. 2018 According to the Penn Wharton Model, indexing capital gains would add roughly another $100 billion. — Alan S. Blinder, WSJ, "Index Capital Gains, but Not Without Congress’s Consent," 1 Aug. 2018 But the effect would be to eliminate indexing, while rolling back the adjustments from recent years—in other words, a tax increase on pretty much everybody. — The Editorial Board, WSJ, "A Vote on Judicial Independence," 2 Oct. 2018 The firm faces heightened competition in everything from its indexing business to fees to a new effort to step up investments in private markets. — Dawn Lim, WSJ, "BlackRock Reports First Investor Outflow in Three Years," 16 Oct. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'indexing.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Keep scrolling for more

More Definitions for indexing

indexing

noun

Financial Definition of indexing

What It Is

Indexing is a passive investment strategy that seeks to mimic or exceed the returns of a designated market index or other proxy.

How It Works

The strategy requires an investor to first choose an index to mimic. The index could be a well-known market index or it could be an index created especially for the investor. There are literally hundreds of established indexes investors can replicate.

Some indexes are exceptionally broad, such as the Nasdaq Composite Index or the Wilshire 5000 Index, which is considered the "total market index" because it contains several thousand stocks. Some indexes are very narrow, such as the American Stock Exchange Biotech Index (BTK), which measures the performance of 17 companies chosen to represent the biotech sector. There are also many international indexes designed to measure the performance of foreign markets. One of the most common is the Financial Times 100 Index, or FTSE, which measures the performance of equities traded on the London Stock Exchange.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is probably the best-known and most widely followed financial index in the world. It consists of 30 of the largest publicly traded firms in the United States. The S&P 500 Index is also very common, comprising more than 70% of the total market cap of all stocks traded in the United States. The Nasdaq Composite is a broad market index that encompasses about 4,000 issues traded on the Nasdaq National Market -- virtually every firm that trades on the exchange.

For practical reasons, investors usually don't purchase all of the securities in an index. Doing so would be very expensive and time-consuming. Thus, investors usually have three choices when using an index strategy. They can choose a very narrow index that represents only a small portion of the market (such as the American Stock Exchange Biotech Index). Investors also can purchase a random sample of securities in an index (this is called a sampling approach) or they can purchase a set number of securities in each segment of an index (this is called a stratified approach). Some research suggests that investors can nearly replicate an index's performance by purchasing as few as 40 of the index's underlying securities.

Why It Matters

Indexing is one of four general types of investing strategies (the other three are the buy-and-hold, structured portfolio and active strategies). The strategy is primarily for long-term investors who want their returns to follow the market (i.e., they want to take on some market risk). The strategy limits this market risk and therefore limits returns.

Whether to use indexing is fundamentally a matter of the investor's opinion of whether securities prices always reflect all available information (i.e., the investor believes in the efficient markets theory). If the investor espouses this theory, then there is no such thing as an undervalued or overvalued security to that investor, and an active income investing strategy will not consistently produce returns that exceed the index after accounting for the added risks and transaction costs involved in the associated frequent buying and selling.

However, the fact that the investor must first select an appropriate index to pursue and then decide which underlying securities to purchase is why indexing is not a totally passive strategy. It usually involves more transaction costs than the buy-and-hold strategy and it also involves more active reinvestment of the proceeds and even rebalancing if the index changes. These factors also mean the investor's returns will be somewhat different than the index's returns. This is why the easiest way to implement indexing is to simply purchase shares of an index fund or ETF that tracks a particular index and let the fund manager handle many of these duties (for a fee, of course).

Source: Investing Answers

Keep scrolling for more

indexing

Definition of indexing

Examples of indexing in a Sentence

First Known Use of indexing

Financial Definition of indexing

WORD OF THE DAY