Trading stock indices is popular among traders, and many forex brokers have taken this opportunity to offer CFDs that track the price of famous international stock indices. Examples of these indices include the Nasdaq and S&P 500 in the US, the DAX in Germany, or the Hang Seng in Hong Kong.
An index is simply an average of the prices of all the stocks that make up a stock index. Traders will therefore find that these instruments move slower than many other assets, and that they respond to news in a different way. For example, corporate earnings of a big company may have a large impact on a stock index, although it has almost no impact on national currencies.