Best's Review now features insurance stock indices.A.M. Best is pleased to publish a series of exclusive stock indices that will provide readers with a useful benchmark for assessing investor confidence in the insurance industry. Best's Insurance Stock Indices include five business segment indices--Multi-Line, Property/Casualty, Life, Health & HMOs, and Brokers & Agents--and a Composite Index Composite Index A grouping of equities, indexes or other factors combined in a standardized way, providing a useful statistical measure of overall market or sector performance over time. Also known simply as a "composite". . The population consists of all companies traded on U.S. stock exchanges for which the primary business is insurance, with a proviso A condition, stipulation, or limitation inserted in a document. A condition or a provision in a deed, lease, mortgage, or contract, the performance or non-performance of which affects the validity of the instrument. It generally begins with the word provided. . A key feature to all but the Brokers & Agents Index is that the lead operating insurer for each company must have an interactive Best's Rating Best's rating A rating A.M. Best Co. assigns to insurance companies based on the company's ability to meet its obligations to its policyholders. . To ensure that the indices accurately reflect the performance of each business segment, the prices of their combined 138 stocks are weighted for their respective market capitalizations Market Capitalization A measure of a public company's size. Market capitalization is the total dollar value of all outstanding shares. It's calculated by multiplying the number of shares times the current market price. This term is often referred to as market cap. . At present, market capitalization of the Composite Index tops $1 trillion One thousand times one billion, which is 1, followed by 12 zeros, or 10 to the 12th power. See space/time. (mathematics) trillion - In Britain, France, and Germany, 10^18 or a million cubed. In the USA and Canada, 10^12. , with the aggregate weightings of the stocks in the component indices breaking out as: Multi-Line (21%), Property/Casualty (34%), Life (19%), Health & HMO HMO health maintenance organization. HMO n. A corporation that is financed by insurance premiums and has member physicians and professional staff who provide curative and preventive medicine within certain financial, (22%) and Brokers &Agents (4%). Each of the A.M. Best indices was set initially at Dec. 31, 2004 = 1,000. Typically, the index value published in Best's Review is for the market close on the Thursday before the magazine goes to press. Regular reporting will highlight monthly, annual and year-to-date performance of the various indices, the top five and bottom five performing individual stocks in the latest four-week period, and charts of the last five weeks of movement in each index. |
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