ABSTRACT
The investment strategy of indexing starts with a most basic and critical decision and that decision involves the selection of the underlying index that will serve as the basis for an investment portfolio. For any given asset or sub-asset class of securities, there is often a number of indexes available to the investor. Within equities, and particularly domestic equities, there are literally thousands of indexes available from which to choose. This chapter will concentrate on examining the issues critical to the investor in selecting a domestic equity index for passive investment purposes, although many of the same issues will be relevant for other asset class indexes as well.
