The S 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) features around 500 companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. It has a strict criteria for entry, so only the highest-quality names make the cut. Among other things, new additions must:

The S&P 500 is weighted by market cap, so the largest companies have a greater influence over its performance than the smallest. Technology is the biggest sector in the index, with a weighting of 32.4%. It includes companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple.

But then there is the S 500 Growth index. It takes around 231 of the top-performing stocks from the regular S 500 and disregards the rest. It selects those stocks based on factors like their momentum and the sales growth of the underlying companies.

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Source Fool.com