Commonly Used Investment Benchmarks

Consumer Price Index—measures the price, on a regular basis of a basket of goods and services bought by ordinary Australian households. This index is used for the purpose of comparing the relative cost of living over periods of time.

Dow Jones Index—measures the market prices of 30 large industrial blue chip companies on the New York Stock Exchange.

FTSE (pronounced Footsie)—is formally known as the Financial Times Stock Exchange Index, and comprises the 100 largest public companies listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Gross Domestic Product—measures the aggregate goods produced and services provided within a country's economy over a single year. GDP is commonly used as an indicator of the economic health of a country, as well as to gauge a country's standard of living.

Hang Sang Index—consists of the 45 largest companies by market capitalization on the Hong Kong stock market.

MSCI—The Morgan Stanley Capital Index represents over 1,600 individual world stocks from 24 countries. This index is commonly used to measure the performance of the world stock market as a whole.

Nasdaq Composite Index—consists of more than 3,000 technology and growth domestic and international based companies on the NASDAQ stock market in the USA.

Nikkei Dow Index—The popularly quoted Japanese Share Price Index, covers the largest 225 shares listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

S & P 500 Index—consists of the 500 largest stocks in the United States based upon their market size, liquidity and sector.

UBS Australia Composite Bond Index—this index includes the largest AUD government, semi-government fixed interest securities, as well as investment grade corporate issuers.