Index funds are here to stay

As the asset management industry grows in heft, and within it the index funds gain traction, it is this ability to engage that will influence how corporate India functions

Charles Dow and Edward Jones created the first index in 1896 to provide a sense of whether the market was on the whole going up or down by averaging the prices of individual stocks. Since then, creating and providing indices has become a big business — and a fiercely competitive one at that. 

Today, indices such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500, FTSE 100, MSCI, Nifty and Sensex are among the best-known brands in financial markets. But the index providers did not reach this pole position by tracking the performance of a set of assets in