Timeline
What happened to Index 9000, in the universe where it exists. The entries are short because the index did very little, on purpose, and the world did the rest.
1970s
September 1976
Robinhood lists every product it could plausibly offer and ranks them by the benefit each would deliver to the client over a lifetime. The whole listed world, held in proportion and left alone, ranks first. The firm decides to build that and nothing else.
31 December 1976
The rulebook is published. Four pages, ten sections, no committee. The index closes its first day at 1,000.00.
16 September 1977
Held on data as at the end of August, as every review since. The review takes one day. Nobody outside the firm notices.
February 1978
Ten percent from the base before the index is fifteen months old, dividends included. The rulebook has no section on drawdowns. No action is taken.
1980s
March 1982
Thirteen percent from the 1981 peak over eleven months, recovered by October 1982. The bull market that follows runs for five years.
19 October 1987
The index falls twenty percent from its August peak by the end of November, and takes until November 1988 to recover it. Every constituent is priced and the level is published on time. The rulebook contains no provision for the day, and none is added.
15 Sep 1989
A typographical error in section 6.3 is corrected. It had stood for thirteen years without anyone acting on it, because nobody had needed to read section 6.3 closely enough to find it.
1990s
1994
A cap on the largest constituents is proposed internally, on the grounds that the top of the index has become concentrated. The proposal is declined in one paragraph: a capped index is a view on the market, and the index exists to hold the market, not to have views on it. No further proposal is recorded.
2000s
March 2000
The longest fall in the record begins: forty-seven percent over thirty months. Reviews are held in September 2000, 2001 and 2002 as scheduled. Nothing else happens.
21 Sep 2001
Six days after US exchanges reopened. Section 6.3 is clarified: a security with no available last traded price is removed at zero. The review proceeds the same day.
January 2006
Five years and ten months after the 2000 high, dividends doing part of the work. The index level passes it without comment.
October 2007
The deepest fall in the record: fifty-eight percent to 9 March 2009, seventeen months down and four years to recover the peak, in April 2013. In the year to September 2009 more constituents are removed for delisting or insolvency than in any other, each at its last traded price under the clause corrected in 1989.
2010s
20 Sep 2013
Section 6.6 is added: a constituent suspended for twenty consecutive trading days is removed at zero. The first addition of substance in thirty-seven years, and the last.
2020s
March 2020
Thirty-four percent between 12 February 2020 and 23 March 2020, the fastest fall in the record, recovered by 24 August 2020. Calculation continues daily. The September review is held as usual.
16 Sep 2022
The four pages become a website, idx9000.com. Section numbering is kept so that fifty years of notices still point at the right clauses.
September 2026
In a neighbouring universe a token is issued that references the index, $IDX. The index is not a party to it. The level stands at 146,061.16, 146 times base, 10.55 percent a year since 1976 with dividends reinvested.
19 September 2026
Nine thousand real companies in forty-four markets, priced from public exchange feeds every three minutes, with a divisor set so that the live record continues the back-history at 146,061.16 without a break. Rulebooks 1.5 and 1.6 record the change: live data, and dividends reinvested. From this day the level on the site is the level.