Salomon’s New Internet Index
By Journal of Indexes Staff

Fortune magazine isn't the only new entry to hop on the Internet index train. At least one more major Wall Street firm is piling on.

In late 1999, Salomon Smith Barney's Global Equity Index Group introduced the first of what is to be a series of highly liquid sector indexes; not surprisingly its first index represents the Internet industry.

The SSB "T" Series Internet Index or NIX includes 30 of the largest publicly listed US Internet companies; Internet companies are defined by SSB as deriving at least 50% of their revenue from Internet-related businesses. As with most of the SSB indexes, the NIX and the other indexes to be introduced in the series are float-weighted. But they are also designed for the purpose of basket trading, so their component weight-ings are modified to accommodate mutual fund diversification rules. The result according to a SSB press release, is a "fully replicable, efficient investment vehicle for a mutual fund."