It's a mutual fund that's designed to follow a particular stock index. For instance, there are funds that will exactly mimic the Dow Jones Industrial Average,

It's a mutual fund that's designed to follow a particular stock index. For instance, there are funds that will exactly mimic the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or Standard & Poor, or other such indexes. And there's a pretty large number of indexes, so if you have an interest in biology, or tech companies, or junk bonds, you can find an index for it. Here's the Vanguard fund for the actual Dow Jones Index: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsMSChart?Ticker=^DJI https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsMSChart?Ticker=^DJI As for "no-load", that means there aren't any fees taken out of your account. Mutual funds take fees from your account to pay for their trades, and it's usually 1-2%. Index funds are brain-dead to manage, so they usually have either a very low load, or no load.