Mutual Funds Home » Mutual Fund Glossary » Index Fund

Index Fund

Index Fund: The index fund is a type of a mutual fund that mimics the movement of a stock market fund.

Some of the indexes whose performance mutual funds attempt to mimic are Russell 2000, Wilshire 5000, NASDAQ 100, MCSI-EAFE and others. Generally, index funds attempt at mimicking the percentages of the S&P 500 index. This is done through the purchase of all 500 stocks that are in the S&P 500.

You can benefit from index funds in several ways, some of which are tax and performance efficiency as well as low fees. These advantages come from the fact that index funds represent passive investments and as a result outperform many of the actively managed funds.

To get the most out of your money, whether you are interested in mutual funds, stocks, ETFs or options, you need two main things - the knowledge and the right trading platform.
As for the trading platform, we can highly recommend you try Zecco.
Zecco offers free stock/etf trading, no account minimum, trading community, real time quotes, and is also protected and insured against loss by SIPC. Opening a Zecco account to take advantage of $0 stock trades allows you to save money, which you can reinvest instead of paying brokerage commissions. These fees can make really big difference for long-term investing options like retirement plans (Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA - 401k).
For the knowledge part we always recommend subscribing to the The Wall Street Journal (and save over 75%).
Article Tools
Rate this article : Low
  • Currently 2.9/5 Stars
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
High
Bookmark this page (CTRL+D) :


Related terms: index fund, index fund investing, index mutual fund, index stock fund, index mutual funds, index fund definition