Australian Vanadium Limited (AVL) Soars 5.556% on Dec 18

Australia: S&P/ASX 200 Index

The S&P/ASX 200 Index is the leading index of stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), the place of Australian Vanadium Limited high interest. The current structure of the index has existed since early 2000, though the index took over from All Ordinaries as Australia’s main investment benchmark.

Components of the index are market capitalization-weighted and float adjusted. Although ASX 200 launched in April 2000 with a value of 3133.3 points, the fact that it inherited All Ordinaries means that its data can be looked back beyond April 2000.

As such, ASX 200 hit its historic trough of 1358.50 points in November 1992, but recovered steadily in the following years to notch an all-time high of 6828.70 points in November 2007, supported in part by the scramble for safe-haven markets as the global financial crisis began to bite. The index first hit the 6000 mark February 2007.

Although the index is market capitalization-weighted, it is designed such that value changes with the change in the stock price of its components rather than the market capitalization. As such, if a component of ASX 200 issued new shares that would affect its market capitalization, adjustments are made to ensure that the increase in market cap of the components alone doesn’t pull the index up unless there is corresponding increase in the price of the component’s stock.

Furthermore, the index is designed in such manner that it excludes restricted stocks issued to insiders or those held by strategic investors such as venture capitalists and governments because these holdings are rarely traded. Instead, the index tracks free float shares that are available for trading all the time.

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