LOS ANGELES, Jan. 3, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Equipping institutional and individual investors and the media with intra-day performance of all U.S.-based small and mid-cap publicly traded equities, Wilshire Associates, a global leader in investment management, investment consulting and investment technology services, today announced that it was making the Wilshire 4500 Extended Market Index (ticker: EMW) available in real-time.
"Because the Wilshire 4500 Index was created by removing the 500 stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 from the Wilshire 5000, scores of medium and small capitalization managers use the Wilshire 4500 as a performance benchmark," said Dennis Tito, founder and chief executive officer of Wilshire Associates. "By offering this index in real-time, we hope to extend to all investors and the media another way to more immediately measure the performance of an important segment of the U.S. equities market."
The American Stock Exchange will begin publishing the Wilshire 4500 to market data vendors approximately every 15 seconds starting on Thursday, January 3, 2002. The Wilshire 4500 will be available in real-time via major data vendors including S&P Comstock, Bloomberg, Reuters and Bridge. Real-time figures also are available free of charge at the Wilshire Associates web site, www.wilshire.com. Created on December 31, 1983, the Wilshire 4500 Extended Market Index, employs the following criteria for the equities covered by the index:
-- Includes all stocks in the Wilshire 5000 excluding stocks in the
S&P 500;
-- The company must be headquartered in the United States;
-- The issue must trade in the United States;
-- The issue must be the primary equity issue for the company;
-- Equity issues include common stocks, REITs, and limited
partnerships;
-- Primary equity issue selection criteria include volume,
institutional holdings, and conversion criteria;
-- Shares outstanding for multiple classes of stock are combined into
the primary issue's shares outstanding to reflect the total market
capitalization of the firm;
-- Bulletin board issues are excluded from the monthly addition
process by the assumption that they do not have consistently
"readily" available prices;
-- Non-domiciled U.S. stocks, foreign issues, ADRs are not included.
About the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index
The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index (ticker: TMW) is the only index that provides the magnitude in dollars of what is gained or lost in the U.S. equities markets. It measures the performance of all U.S. headquartered equity securities with readily available price data. Approximately 6,200 capitalization weighted security returns are used to adjust the index. Developed more than 27 years ago by Tito, it is the only such broad-based indicator of the value of U.S. equities.
About Wilshire Associates
Wilshire Associates is a global leader in providing investment management, investment consulting and investment technology services to a wide variety of institutional and high net worth investors. Wilshire has provided asset management, consulting and portfolio analytics to more than 400 institutional clients with assets of $1 trillion. It has provided private equity services since 1984 and currently manages $9 billion in equity, fixed income, and private market funds.