The 500 (give or take a few) largest US public companies that make up the Standard and Poors 500 Index. Each row provides the stock ticker, company name, GICS sector and sub-industry classification, and headquarters state (or country if the constituent is domiciled abroad). The index is rebalanced quarterly, so this dataset is refreshed on the same cycle.
Pro tip: The S&P 500 actually contains more than 500 stocks because companies with dual share classes (Alphabet GOOG/GOOGL, News Corp NWS/NWSA, Fox FOX/FOXA) count as one company but trade as two tickers. The current count is closer to 503 trade-able securities.
Select which columns to include in your download.
About the S&P 500 Dataset
The Standard and Poors 500 Index tracks the 500 largest US public companies by market capitalization across 11 GICS sectors. Maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, the index is the most-watched US equity benchmark — trillions of dollars in ETFs and index funds track it. Constituents are added and removed quarterly to reflect mergers, spin-offs, and changes in market cap relative to the threshold.
Common Use Cases
Financial analysts running sector-based screens, portfolio managers benchmarking against the index, ETF and index-fund tools, algorithmic-trading universe definitions, financial journalism, business-school case studies, equity-research dashboards, and corporate-comparison tools.
Column Reference
- ticker — primary stock ticker on the NYSE or NASDAQ. Dual-class names use the period notation (BRK.B, BF.B).
- company_name — official company name as used in S&P materials.
- sector — GICS sector (11 in total): Information Technology, Health Care, Financials, Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services, Industrials, Consumer Staples, Energy, Utilities, Materials, Real Estate.
- sub_industry — GICS sub-industry within the sector (158 sub-industries in the full GICS hierarchy).
- hq_state — US state of corporate headquarters, or foreign country if domiciled abroad.
Quarterly Rebalancing
S&P announces index changes a few days before the effective date — typically one company is added and another removed each quarter, though larger reshuffles happen during the September annual reconstitution. Major recent additions include Palantir, DoorDash, Uber, GE Vernova, and Smurfit Westrock. Major recent deletions reflect mergers (e.g. Pioneer Natural Resources acquired by Exxon Mobil) or market-cap declines.
Dual-Share-Class Constituents
A handful of S&P 500 constituents have two classes of publicly-traded shares with different voting rights. Both classes are in the index: Alphabet (GOOG / GOOGL), News Corp (NWS / NWSA), Fox (FOX / FOXA), Brown-Forman (BF.A / BF.B). This dataset includes the primary trading symbol; sometimes both classes are listed separately depending on the data source.
GICS Sector Taxonomy
The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) is a joint S&P / MSCI taxonomy used worldwide. It has four levels: sector (11), industry group (24), industry (69), and sub-industry (158). This dataset uses sector and sub-industry. Communication Services is a relatively new sector created in 2018 by reclassifying telecom and parts of consumer discretionary and IT. Real Estate split off from Financials in 2016.
