Financial Dictionary
Value Line Composite Index
- An overall measure of stock market performance based on approximately 1,700 stocks covered by the Value Line Investment Survey. The index includes stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, the regional and Canadian exchanges, the Nasdaq National Market, and the over-the-counter market. Unlike most indexes, which are weighted by market capitalization or stock price, the Value Line Composite Index assigns equal weight to each component. In other words, it provides an indication of the performance of a portfolio with equal amounts of money invested in each stock covered by Value Line. In 1988 Value Line started publishing the Value Line Arithmetic Index, which tracks the performance of the average stock rather than the median stock. Both the Value Line Composite Index and the Value Line Arithmetic Index serve as indicators for the performance of the overall stock market as opposed to large-cap stocks or particular segments of the market.
