The Mormon Stock Index tries to measure the stock market performance of companies run by Mormon executives. More than 50 companies have been part of the index in its two year history, including more than 30 companies on the index today. Companies are included as long as they have a Mormon executive on their management team, and as long as the company's public stock market capitalization exceeds $100 million. (See our qualifications page for more information.)

Mormon News started the stock index as part of its effort to provide unique Mormon-related news features. It remains, to our knowledge, the only stock index measuring the performance of Mormon executives.

While Mormon News' founder, Kent Larsen, had thought about a Mormon Stock Index well before the news service was founded, another Mormon news medium, the Latter-day Herald (Washington DC area, now defunct), provided a list of companies run by Mormons along with their current stock prices that it called the Mormon Stock Index. However, that list did not include an overall calculation.

The stock index was started during the first week of July, 2000 using the list of companies from the Latter-day Herald and additional companies Mormon News had identified in its then nearly three years of operation. The original list had just 17 companies.

Since its inception, the Mormon Stock Index has grown to include more than 30 companies, while another 20 or more companies have been dropped from the index either because the Mormon executive left the company, because the company merged into another, which didn't put the Mormon executive in its top management, or because the company's market capitalization fell below the requirement (See our qualifications page).

To calculate the index, the stock prices of the companies on the index are weighted according to their market capitalization, modified so that no individual company makes up more than 10% of the index. The index is re-weighted monthly, and stocks are removed if they no longer meet the requirements. New stocks are added as soon as they are discovered, and the index is re-weighted at that time.

If you know of a publically-traded company that has a Mormon among its top executives, please let us know. We can then determine if it meets the qualifications, and put it on the index. If the company doesn't meet the qualifications, we still track the company, if it has a Mormon executive, in case it meets the qualifications in the future. To submit a company, please see our "Suggest Company" page.