FTSE 100

FTSE 100:History Past, Present and Future of ftse 100 Companies and Share Prices

Launched in January 1984, the FTSE 100 index is made up of the 100 most highly-capitalised blue chip companies for share prices in the UK, representing around 81 per cent of the country's market. Ftse100 is widely used as a basis for investment products. These include derivatives, funds and exchange-traded funds. FTSE Group, which runs the ftse100 index, is an independent organisation that is jointly owned by the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange.

The FTSE 100 Index accounts for 8.97 per cent of the global equity market capitalisation, according to the FTSE All-World Index companies and share prices recorded on December 31st 2008. All of the FTSE 100 constituents are traded on the London Stock Exchange's SETS trading system. Firms on the index include Aviva and BP.

As for how the index is run, a public set of rules, which is overseen by an independent committee of leading market professionals, govern it. This committee makes sure that all of the rules are adhered to and adequately applied, while regular index reviews are carried out to maintain a continuous and accurate representation of the market.

The real-time index of ftse is calculated every 15 seconds and data is available at 20:00 GMT or BST through File Transfer Protocol and by email.

There are also a number of other related indexes, including the FTSE 250, which is comprised of mid-capitalised firms not covered by the FTSE 100 and represents in the region of 15 per cent of UK market capitalisation. The FTSE All-Share Index, meanwhile, represents 98-99 per cent of the UK market capitalisation and is the aggregation of the FTSE 100,FTSE 250 and FTSE Small Cap Indices. Next would be the FTSE 350

The FTSE 100 recently reported one of its best weekly rises this year and noted another strong session on Monday July 20th. Jim Wood-Smith, head of research at Williams de Broe told Reuters the FTSE 100 could go even higher as investors with large amounts of cash make their way into the market.

"Ordinarily we would argue there is not enough in the news flow nor in the value of the market for there to be a strong run from here. But knowing the levels of cash that most people are supposed to be holding one has to suspect that holders of cash are going to be forced to come back into the market and that is going to drive prices upwards," he commented.

The highest ever value of the FTSE 100 was recorded on December 30th 1999 when it reached 6950 points. As of 15:06 BST on July 20th 2009, the value of the companies share prices index stood at 4,445.27.