An example of a popular index fund is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ... often with consideration of how to weight the various components of the index. The three main ways include: Indexes are useful ...

In a market cap-weighted index, the larger the company’s market cap, the more influence it has within the index. For example, ...

There are many factors that indexes can be weighted by, the most common of which are market capitalization and share price. The S&P 500, for example, is weighted by float-adjusted market ...

A fund – or a fund's benchmark – might, for example, be dividend-weighted, meaning more emphasis is put on stocks with higher dividends. Some funds and indexes are weighted based on public float.

When the Dow ends the day lower, the market is down. The Dow is a price-weighted index, which means that each component company is weighted according to its share price. Higher-priced companies ...