index fund

American

noun

a fund, as a mutual fund or pension fund, with a portfolio that contains many of the securities listed in a major stock index in order to match the performance of the stock market generally.

Etymology

Origin of index fund

First recorded in 1975–80

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

He says trusts should own assets that don’t produce much current income but have higher growth potential, such as index funds.

From Barron's

In theory, you would have come out ahead in the alternative index fund, but in practice you would have finished behind.

From The Wall Street Journal

“We’ve reached a resolution to put this matter behind us—a resolution that reaffirms our longstanding practices and standards and the passive nature of our index funds,” a Vanguard spokesman said in a statement.

From The Wall Street Journal

So far in 2026, a number of index funds that follow alternative strategies to track subsets of the S&P 500 or change the index’s weighting have performed quite well.

From MarketWatch

We exclude all index funds but include actively managed ETFs and so-called smart-beta ETFs, which are passively managed but created from active strategies.

From Barron's

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023