Price-Weighted Index

What is Price-Weighted Index?

Price-Weighted Index refers to the stock index where the member companies are allocated the on the basis or in the proportion of the price per share of the respective member company prevailing at the particular point of time and helps in keeping the track of the overall health of economy along with its current condition.

It is a stock market Index in which companies’ stocks are weighted according to their share price. This index is mostly influenced by stock, which has a higher price, and such stock receives greater weight in the index regardless of companies issuing size or number of outstanding Shares. Stock with fewer prices has less influence on the index. In simple words, PWI is an arithmetic averageArithmetic AverageThe average value represents the set of data values; the average from the whole data is calculated by adding all the set values and dividing them by the number of values. Average = (a1 + a2 + …. + an)/nread more of Prices of securities included in the index.

DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) is one of the Price-Weighted Index in the world.

Price-Weighted Index Formula

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For eg:
Source: Price-Weighted Index (wallstreetmojo.com)

Examples

From the below index calculation, what proportion does each stock represent?

So Weight of Netflix in the above index can be calculated as,

= 220/220+10.50+57

= $0.7652

So Weight of Ford in the above index can be calculated as,

= 10.50/220+10.50+57

= $0.0365

So Weight of Buffalo wild wing in the above index can be calculated as,

= 57/220+10.50+57

= $0.1983

Therefore, the calculation is as follows,

PWI = $220+$10.50+$57/3

PWI = $95.83

Two Major Price-Weighted Index

1. Dow Jones Industrial Average – Based on 30 U.S. Stocks
2. Nikkei Dow – Based on 225 Stocks

Advantages

• It is easy to track the overall health of the economy and the current condition of the economy.
• It allows investors to make a decision, and with the help of historical data in the index, it gives an idea to investors how the market reacted to certain situations in the past.
• One of the most important advantages of the Price-Weighted Index is its simplicity; it is easy to calculate, understand, and the weighing scheme is simple to understand.

Disadvantages

• If the price of small firm stock changes has the same effect on the index as price changes in large firm stock.
• A stock price in the index is not a good indicator of its true market value.
• Small companies with higher share prices may have a higher weight, and larger companies with a low share price will have Smaller weights and which will show an unclear or uncertain picture of the market.
• One of the most important disadvantages or serious bias of it is that the stock which nominally has a higher share price has the greatest impact on the index, and due to these, most of the stock indices don’t use Price-Weighted Index.
• One of the disadvantages of it is that even in the event of stock splits, adjustment is made with the divisor, and it leads to arbitrary changes in weights.
• Due to stock splitsStock SplitsStock split, also known as share split, is the process by which companies divide their existing outstanding shares into multiple shares, such as 3 shares for every 1 owned, 2 shares for every 1 held, and so on. The company's market capitalization remains unchanged during a stock split because, while the number of shares grows, the price per share decreases correspondingly.read more price of growing firms reduced, which gives downgrade bias to the index.
• An index is just am access to a certain market, and it doesn’t mean it is 100 % accurate, and there is a number of factors that change the direction of the market, which sometimes do not reflect in an index.
• In this method, small and large companies have the same importance or value in the index price.

Limitations

• Whenever there are stock splits or Dividends, the divisor should be adjusted; otherwise, the index will not or would not able to measure actual growth. So this means stock splits cause issues.
• If you look at Price-Weighted Index strictly, it’s not an index at all; it is an average, the index is nothing but the comparison of currently calculated average with the same base value.
• Security price or stock price alone can’t communicate its true market value. It ignores the market factors of supply and demand.
• The problem with the price-weighted index is that it is biased towards high price stock.

Important Points

Conclusion

The above description gives an insight into how the PWI provides insight into the share price of a stock in the market. An index generally measures a statistical change in the portfolio of stocks, which represents the overall market. In the year 1896 first index was created, which is known today with the name Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Nowadays, it is less popular and used as compared to other indices due to certain limitations to the index. There are some advantages and disadvantages associated with the price-weighted index.

It is clear that it reflects changes in stock prices but did not reflect any changes in the market. For successful trading of an index, one should have an understanding of the construction of indexes, and if differences and interrelationship among the indexes are understood, then it is easy to understand the futures contract that is based on indexes. In a price-weighted index, a stock with a higher price has a higher impact on the performance of the index.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to what is Price-Weighted Index. Here we discuss how to calculate Price-Weighted Index using its formula along with practical examples. You may learn more about Investment Banking from the following articles –

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