What is the MSCI Index?
by Phillip McGann, 21/09/2006  

MSCI stands for Morgan Stanley Capital International and it is a financial services company that provides Indexing services to market participants. What this involves is formulating, measuring and maintaining indices for major stock and bond markets so market participants (including fund managers as well as private investors) can benchmark performance against them.

The company’s most famous index is the MSCI Index, which covers a selection of stocks of all the major developed country markets in the world. The commonly used index, which has been calculated since Dec 1969, has stocks from 23 countries as follows:

Australia Austria Belgium Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Hong Kong Ireland Italy Japan Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Singapore Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United Stated.