Can one directly buy indexes or absolutely needs to go through ETFs?

speedy said: "Hello, The question is in the title. I tried to post it in another forum but, unfortunately, nobody could answer me. I am in the process of choosing what I will eventually trade. I was thinking to follow indexes of different poor corelated industries. But, then, I asked myself if I could directly trade indexes or if I had to go through ETFs. I looked on this page: [url]http://www.marketcenter.com/stocks/m_overview.action[/url] I saw that for most indexes no volume were posted, I deducted that most of them couldn't be traded. However, some volume were posted for some index. In the link I gave you above, you can see that volumes are posted for the DJ trans avg and for the dow jones. at this point, I thought one could directly trade those two indexes since they had volumes. Indeed, how could they have volumes notified for them if they are not tradable ? However, I do still have a doubt... what the need for ETFs if indexes are tradable ? Do you understand my confusion?"

HappyHarry said: "Yes I understand. Generally the indexes are not tradable, but rather they create a tracking stock which mimics the action of the index. However, you can trade Index Futures, if you're so inclined. But for true index investing, you're better off with the ETFs, because they represent the complete basket of stocks."

speedy said: "Thank you very much for your answer. Just one last thing, since the dow jones and the DJ trans avg have volumes are they tradable? I would think the answer is yes but, when I see the column "last value" (on my link in my first post) I tell myself that it seems too high to actualy be the price. Is the last value realy the price one unit of the index costs? Even when it is above 10,000 in the case of the dow jones?"

HappyHarry said: "The Dow Jones is actually an arbitrary index made of 30 of the largest industrial stocks of our times. You can trade Dow Jones futures."

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