In: Finance
Wilshire 5000:
Wilshire 5000 index is famous for the breadth of its coverage as it is composed of all the publicly listed stocks in the US that are actively traded in the stock markets. The exhaustive coverage in terms of 'number of constituents' makes it a unique index among its peers. It is believed to be a suitable indicator of the overall market as it includes a large number of companies of varying sizes.
DJIA:
Dow Jones Industrial Average is one of the most commonly followed stock market indexes in the US markets and includes 30 large companies as it's constituents. Though the name has a historical feel with the word 'Industrial', the modern version of the DJIA includes large stocks from various industries and is not restricted to just industrial stocks. Due to just 30 constituents in the average, many investors believe that it doesn't give a good idea of the performance of the broader US market.
S&P 500:
S&P 500 is the most famous stock market index in the world, representing 500 large US companies from various industries across the US. It's believed to be the best barometer of the performance of US markets and is arrived by using free-float capitalisation weighted method where the components are assigned weights in the index based on their respective market capitalisation of the free float shares.