The NASDAQ Global Index Family represents more than 98% of the global equity investable marketplace and will result in the development of 24,000 indexes. The family consists of global securities broken down by market segment, region, country, size and sector. The NASDAQ Global Index Family covers 9,000 securities with a combined float-adjusted market capitalization of over $32 trillion.

Today marks the first phase of the launch of the NASDAQ Global Index Family, with the introduction of approximately 4,000 indexes that are calculated in US dollars. The remaining indexes will be unveiled in subsequent phases in other currencies.
"The NASDAQ Global Index Family offers institutional and retail investors, asset managers, traders and other market participants a broad representation of the global investable equity marketplace through efficient access and pricing," said NASDAQ OMX Executive Vice President John Jacobs. "Our newest index offering provides additional opportunities for financial product sponsors and portfolio managers to benchmark and track global equities. With the introduction of this comprehensive family of indexes, our index business — NASDAQ OMX Global Indexes — continues its growth as a premier global index operation."

The index family covers 45 countries classified as Developed and Emerging Markets across the following regions: the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East-Africa. Like all NASDAQ OMX indexes, the NASDAQ Global Index Family is based on a transparent, rules-based index methodology. Over ten years of historical back-tested data is available for the entire global family. Price, total return and net total return versions are calculated for each index.

With the introduction of the NASDAQ Global Index Family, NASDAQ OMX Global Indexes now offers benchmark families across multiple asset classes and geographies including the NASDAQ Commodity Index Family, the NASDAQ OMX Green Economy Familymily, the NASDAQ OMX Green Economy Family and the NASDAQ US All Market Index family.

The NASDAQ Global Index Family is calculated with the new, state-of-the-art Global Index Calculator powered by NASDAQ OMX INET technology - the world's fastest trading system technology.

Values for the NASDAQ Global Index Family are disseminated by NASDAQ OMX's improved index data distribution service - the Global Index Data Service (GIDS) - which is also built on INET technology. With this upgrade, NASDAQ OMX has strengthened its position as a premier provider of real-time and end-of-day data. Additionally, weightings, components and historical data continue to be available through the revamped NASDAQ OMX Global Index Watch.