The MERVAL Index is the most important index

Stock market index

A stock market index is a method of measuring a section of the stock market. Many indices are cited by news or financial services firms and are used as benchmarks, to measure the performance of portfolios such as mutual funds....

 of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange

Buenos Aires Stock Exchange

The Buenos Aires Stock Exchange is the organization responsible for the operation of Argentina's primary stock exchange located at Buenos Aires CBD. Founded in 1854, is the successor of the Banco Mercantil, created in 1822 by Bernardino Rivadavia.Citing BCBA's self definition: "It is a...

. It is a price-weighted

Price-weighted

A price-weighted index is a stock market index where each constituent makes up a fraction of the index that is proportional to its price. For a stock market index this implies that stocks are included in proportions based on their quoted prices. A stock trading at $100 will thus be making up 10...

 index, calculated as the market value of a portfolio of stocks selected based on their market share, number of transactions and quotation price. The base of MERVAL is set at 30 June 1986 = 0.01 Argentine peso

Argentine peso

The peso is the currency of Argentina, identified by the symbol $ preceding the amount in the same way as many countries using dollar currencies. It is subdivided into 100 centavos. Its ISO 4217 code is ARS...

s.

The corporations and weighted prices that compose MERVAL are updated every three months, based on their market share during the previous period.

Historical values

The following is a table showing the annual maximum, minimum and average values of MERVAL between 1996 and 2005. During that period, the index hit its minimum value in 2001, some time before the explosion of the economic crisis

Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002)

The Argentine economic crisis was a financial situation, tied to poilitical unrest, that affected Argentina's economy during the late 1990s and early 2000s...

, but recovered in an accelerated fashion after that.

Year	Maximum	Minimum	Final
1996	650.23	491.71	649.37
1997	866.47	576.32	687.50
1998	715.93	301.73	430.06
1999	604.10	340.61	550.47
2000	645.29	396.55	416.77
2001	539.20	200.86	295.39
2002	525.09	267.73	524.95
2003	1077.98	520.55	1071.95
2004	1389.53	839.93	1375.37
2005	1731.33	1276.48	1543.31