A score for a group of companies

You own an S&P 500 ETF and one company in it goes bust. What happens?

A small dent: it's 1 of about 500

Indexes and ETFs | TradeLiga

When the news says “stocks rose 1% today”, it means an index: one number that tracks the prices of a whole group of companies, like a team score.
The S&P 500 tracks 500 large US companies. Monthly averages, 2009 to 2025: from about 760 in March 2009 to about 6,850 in December 2025, with some big drops along the way.
Every market has its own: IHSG (Indonesia), IPC (Mexico), IBEX 35 (Spain), Nifty 50 (India), FTSE 100 (UK), Nikkei 225 (Japan) and Germany's DAX (40 companies since 2021).
An ETF is a fund that trades on the stock exchange like a single share. An index ETF holds the whole index: one purchase, hundreds of companies, like ordering a combo meal.
Traders also trade indexes through futures or CFDs, with names like “US500” or “GER40”. The price follows the index, but leverage makes gains and losses bigger.
Common mistake
Myth: an index fund can't lose much because it holds many companies. Reality: it spreads company risk, not market risk. From 2007 to 2009 the S&P 500 fell about 57%.
Key takeaway
An index is a team score for a market. An ETF lets you own the whole team, but the whole team can still lose.

An index is... A score for a group of companiesAn index combines the prices of many companies into one number, so you can see how a whole market is doing.
The Nikkei 225 tracks stocks in... JapanThe Nikkei 225 follows 225 big companies listed in Tokyo.
An ETF lets you... Own many investments at onceOne ETF unit gives you a slice of every company in the fund. It still carries risk and small yearly fees.
You own an S&P 500 ETF and one company in it goes bust. What happens? A small dent: it's 1 of about 500Each company is only a slice of the fund, so one failure hurts a little, not a lot.