The Financial Times Actuaries Index is also known as the FTI, Financial Times Index. The FTI is the daily movement of 30 major industrial share prices on the London Stock Exchange, as issued by the Financial Times Newspaper in the U.K..

An index is a statistical measure of change. In the case of financial markets, the index is like an imaginary portfolio of securities which represents a portion of a particular market, or the market itself. Each index has its own method of calculation and is usually expressed in terms of change from a base value.

The changes are actually more important that the real numeric value because knowing that a stock exchange is at a certain amount does not demonstrate the performance as much as knowing the percentage of its increase..

In the Financial Times Index the denominator in the index formula is the market capitalization at the base date adjusted for all capital changes affecting the index since the base date.

The denominator is the stated value found on financial instruments. The base date is a particular time period where data is used for comparison purposes when measuring economic data of other periods. Capital refers to financial resources readily available for use.

The Financial Times Index is calculated hourly during business hours from an unweighted average of thirty leading chips on the London Stock Exchange. This index was the best known gauge for the stock market until recently when it was replaced by the Financial Times Share E 100 Exchange. This index reports on 100 blue chip stocks traded on the London Stock Exchange and is co-owned by the London Stock Exchange and The Financial Times Newspaper..

Finance : Financial times