Wilshire 4500
The Wilshire 4500 is a special type of financial thingy that helps people keep track and measure how well large companies are doing. It's like a special tool that helps people know if big companies are doing really good or not so good with their money and business stuff.
The Wilshire 4500 is called an index, which is kind of like a giant scoreboard that shows how all the biggest companies in the United States are doing. It adds up how much all the companies are worth (which is called their market value) and then divides that total number by a special number that helps make it easier to see how well each company is doing by itself.
This index helps people know if the stock market is going up or down. It's like if you were playing a game with your friends and you all had your own scoreboards, but then someone made a super big scoreboard that combined all your scores together so you could see who was winning overall.
If the Wilshire 4500 is going up, that means lots of big companies are making more money, which can be good for people who have invested their own money in those companies too. But if the index goes down, it means those companies might not be doing as well, and people might lose money.
Right now, the Wilshire 4500 is one of the most popular indexes people use to keep track of how well big companies are doing. Lots of grown-ups use it to know if it's a good time to buy or sell stocks (which are like little pieces of ownership in a company) so they can try to make money too.
The Wilshire 4500 is called an index, which is kind of like a giant scoreboard that shows how all the biggest companies in the United States are doing. It adds up how much all the companies are worth (which is called their market value) and then divides that total number by a special number that helps make it easier to see how well each company is doing by itself.
This index helps people know if the stock market is going up or down. It's like if you were playing a game with your friends and you all had your own scoreboards, but then someone made a super big scoreboard that combined all your scores together so you could see who was winning overall.
If the Wilshire 4500 is going up, that means lots of big companies are making more money, which can be good for people who have invested their own money in those companies too. But if the index goes down, it means those companies might not be doing as well, and people might lose money.
Right now, the Wilshire 4500 is one of the most popular indexes people use to keep track of how well big companies are doing. Lots of grown-ups use it to know if it's a good time to buy or sell stocks (which are like little pieces of ownership in a company) so they can try to make money too.
Related topics others have asked about: