ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Wilshire 5000

Imagine you have a toy box with lots of different toys inside. Wilshire 5000 is like a really big toy box that holds lots and lots of toys. But instead of toys, it holds stocks.

Stocks are like little pieces of ownership in big companies. So if you own a stock, you own a tiny part of the company.

Wilshire 5000 has a special way of organizing all these stocks. It takes the 5000 biggest companies in America and puts them all in one place.

So Wilshire 5000 is like a giant toy box that holds pieces of 5000 different big American companies. People use it to keep track of all the stocks in these companies and see how well they are doing.