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Instruments introduced by the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange in 1989 to provide small investors with a low cost way to obtain an index equivalent portfolio. A federal court held that index participations were futures contracts and, hence, could not be traded on securities exchanges. The index participations, which had attracted fair investor interest, were delisted because of this regulatory obstacle. The AMEX introduced a replacement product, Standard & Poor's Index Depository Receipts (SPDRs, pronounced spiders). SPDRs became the first entry in a new class of instruments called EXchange-TRAded (EXTRA) Funds. Also called Cash Index Participations (CIPs).
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