The Future of Indexing

Our Directory of Index Investments contains well over 100 index mutual funds and exchange-traded securities spanning multiple asset classes and world geographies. Index investing is exploding. Spiders, WEBS, and other traded index securities are proliferating on the American Stock Exchange. Index-oriented fund companies such as Vanguard may soon be forced to offer exchange-traded products or risk losing assets.

Barclays Global Investors will soon launch 51 new index securities which will be traded like Spiders, Diamonds, and WEBS on the American Stock Exchange. The new securities include domestic and international S&P, Dow Jones, and Russell indices.

E*Trade has partnered with Barclays to introduce 6 new mutual funds, including Internet and technology index funds based on Goldman Sachs indexes.

Indexing will continue to proliferate overseas as Vanguard, Fidelity, and other fund companies attempt to duplicate their U.S. indexing success, and international fund companies become increasingly enamored with indexing's performance and share gains in investor assets.

Bottom Line: Indexing will continue to gain momentum as the best way to gain asset class diversification at the lowest cost. Index investing vehicles will also continue to grow as new funds, exchange-traded securities, and global asset class indexes become available and more widely covered in the financial press.

The next decade will see an explosion in index investing by retail investors.