Russell 2000
The Russell 2000 is a US index that tracks roughly 2,000 smaller companies, drawn from the Russell 3000 as the companies ranked immediately below the largest 1,000 that make up the . It is the most widely followed benchmark for US .
Like the , membership is set mechanically during Russell's semiannual reconstitution, ranking companies by market capitalization with no committee discretion involved. The IWM is one of the most heavily traded ways investors track the Russell 2000 without buying all 2,000 underlying individually.
companies in the Russell 2000 tend to carry more debt relative to their size, generate a larger share of domestically rather than overseas, and have less than the giants in the . That makes the Russell 2000 more sensitive to US interest rate changes and the domestic economy specifically, and it often moves more sharply than indexes in both directions.