It is a long time since May 26 1896, when a price average of the 12 most important US companies was published in a magazine called “Customer’s Afternoon Letter”. The level of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is still reported, now in the global media, but it is joined by some millions of other indices, covering all asset classes and calculated in any number of different ways. (PDF)

“Looking beyond the conventional is where the industry is really headed,” says Jamie Farmer, senior director of global index operations at Dow Jones Stoxx.