The S&P 500 stands for Standard & Poor 500 and is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock market exchanges: the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ.[citation needed]
The index focus is U.S.-based companies although there are a few companies with headquarters in and/or incorporated in other countries.
After the Dow Jones Industrial Average[citation needed], the S&P 500 is one of the most commonly followed equity indices, is considered a bellwether for the American economy, and is included in the Index of Leading Indicators. Many mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and other funds such as pension funds, are designed to track the performance of the S&P 500 index. Hundreds of billions of US dollars have been invested in this fashion.
The index is the best known of the many indices owned and maintained by Standard & Poor's, a division of McGraw-Hill. S&P 500 refers not only to the index, but also to the 500 companies that have their common stock included in the index. The ticker symbol for the S&P 500 index varies. Some examples of the symbol are ^GSPC,.INX, and $SPX. The stocks included in the S&P 500 index are also part of the broader S&P 1500 and S&P Global 1200 stock market indices.
Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam ( pronunciation (help·info); Telugu: శ్రీపతి పండితారాధ్యుల బాలసుబ్రహ్మణ్యం; born 4 June 1946) is an Indian playback singer, actor, music director, voice actor and film producer. He is sometimes referred to as S. P. B. or Balu. He won the National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer six times. He won the Nandi Awards 25 times from Andhra Pradesh.
He has sung over 40,000 songs in various Indian languages. He is the only playback singer in India to have won National Film Awards across four languages. He has also won a Filmfare Award, three Filmfare Awards South and numerous state awards from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. He is a recipient of civilian awards such as Padmashri (2001) and Padma Bhushan (2011) from the government of India.
Balasubrahmanyam was born to S. P. Sambamurthy in Konetammapeta of Madras Presidency, present day Nellore district in Andhra Pradesh in a Brahmin Family. Balasubrahmanyam's father was a Harikatha artist who had also acted in plays. He has two brothers and five sisters. He is the elder brother of singer S.P. Sailaja. He is married to Savitri and has two children, Pallavi and S. P. B. Charan who is a playback singer and film producer as well.
Warren Edward Buffett (/ˈbʌfɨt/; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. He is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and is the third wealthiest person in the world as of 2011. In 2012, American magazine Time named Buffett one of the most influential people in the world.
Buffett is called the "Wizard of Omaha", "Oracle of Omaha", or the "Sage of Omaha" and is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. Buffett is also a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Gates Foundation. On April 11, 2012, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children and only son of U.S. Representative Howard Buffett, a fierce critic of the interventionist New Deal domestic and foreign policy, and his wife Leila (née Stahl). Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School in Omaha. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress, and after moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School, and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947, where his senior yearbook picture reads: "likes math; a future stock broker."
George Soros ( /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/;Hungarian: Soros György; Hungarian: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American business magnate,investor, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes. He is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his US$1 billion in investment profits during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.
Between 1979 and 2011, Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89), and provided Europe's largest higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest. Soros is also the chairman of the Open Society Institute.
Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary to a well-to-do, nonobservant Jewish family. His mother Elizabeth (also known as Erzebet), whom Tivadar married in 1924, came from a family that owned a thriving silk shop. His father Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a lawyer and had been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest. Tivadar was an Esperantist writer and taught George to speak Esperanto from birth. Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots. Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. Soros took a job with the Jewish Council, which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis: