The All Ordinaries (ticker name: XAO) was established in January 1980 is the oldest Australian share index. It’s also known as the All Ords or the All Ordinaries Index, AOI.

Todays Chart

All Ords Chart courtesy of the Australian Stock Exchange.

History of the Name of the All Ordinaries or XAO

It’s name was derived because it contains nearly all ordinary (or common) shares listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). The market capitalization of the companies included in the All Ords index amounts to over 95% of the value of all shares listed on the ASX.

The All Ords started with a base index of 500. Due to growth in the index this is commonly represented at a much higher value. For instance, if the index is currently at 5000 points, the value of stocks in the All Ords has increased tenfold since January 1980, excluding the affects of inflation.

On 3 April 2000, the All Ords was restructured to consist of the 500 largest Australian companies by market capitalisation.This coincided with the introduction of new benchmark indices.

Due to the introduction of these new indices, the All Ords has been significantly lessened. In order to address the issue of performance or benchmarking, the ASX introduced six Benchmark Indices specifically designed to meet the needs of Fund Managers. These are:

• ASX20
• ASX50
• ASX100
• ASX200
• ASX300
• SMALL ORDINARIES

The ASX will continue to provide the new All Ordinaries Index and the Benchmark indices in accumulation index formats that will be calculated at the end of each trading day. Given the importance of historical data, all of the indices will be calculated retrospectively, initially from 1992.

High: As of 1 November 2007, the All Ords index was at a record 6873.20.

Low: As of 22 January 2008, due to turmoil related to the US 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis, the index had fallen 24 percent to 5,222.0 points.

Lowest to date: On 6 March 2009, in the wake of a worldwide drop in stock values, the index reached a low of 3,111.7 points, a drop of over 54% from the 1 November 2007 high.