The LSE Directory / Index providers
CRSP (the Center for Research in Security Prices) is a financial data and index provider that maintains one of the longest continuously updated databases of US stock market history, with daily security level price, dividend, shares outstanding and delisting records extending back to 1925 for the New York Stock Exchange, with American Stock Exchange data added from 1962 and Nasdaq from 1972. Since 2005 it has also published CRSP Market Indexes, a family of market capitalization segmented benchmarks (mega, large, mid, small and micro cap, plus value, growth, sector and ESG variants) that asset managers use to build and benchmark index funds. CRSP's research data is distinguished by its academic rigor and depth; it was built to give economists a clean, survivorship bias free record of realized stock returns rather than a real time trading feed, and it remains a standard reference dataset in academic finance. Its index methodology differs from rivals such as S&P Dow Jones Indices and FTSE Russell in how it manages reconstitution: CRSP sets market cap breakpoints with transition bands and a mechanism it calls packeting, moving a stock's index membership in stages (half at a band breach, the remainder if it stays outside the band the following period) and phasing full index changes over five trading days. This is intended to reduce the turnover and front running costs that a single day, lump sum reconstitution can create for funds tracking an index. CRSP was established in March 1960 at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business by professors James H. Lorie and Lawrence Fisher, funded by an initial grant from Merrill Lynch, with an initial mandate to compile monthly NYSE common stock prices from 1926 to 1962. It operated as a Booth affiliated center until 2020, when it became an independent University of Chicago LLC affiliate governed by a board of Booth faculty and university officials. By the time of its 2026 sale it served more than 600 subscribers across 35 countries, and its indexes underpinned over 3 trillion dollars in linked fund assets, including Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund and ETF (VTSAX and VTI) and its Mid Cap Index Fund (VIMAX and VO). On September 23, 2025, Morningstar agreed to acquire CRSP from the University of Chicago for 375 million dollars, and completed the purchase on February 2, 2026 for a final cash consideration of approximately 365 million dollars, with the university retaining the proceeds for research and education and securing continued CRSP data access for Booth researchers. In April 2026, Morningstar announced it would fold the CRSP Market Indexes into its own brand as Morningstar Indexes, with the name change taking effect in late July 2026, and by June 30, 2026 it had migrated the CRSP Research Data Products previously hosted on crsp.org to a new Data section on morningstar.com. Morningstar simultaneously extended its indexing agreement with Vanguard to keep the now Morningstar branded indexes underlying VTSAX, VTI, VIMAX and VO.
