Paris, France's best-known stock-market index.

Stock market index composed of 40 of the most traded stocks on the French First Market.

Index of the major 40 companies on the French Stock Exchange in Paris.

French index of -- wait for it -- the forty major French companies.

Index of 40 stocks on the Paris Bourse, or stock market. The stocks are the most-active shares from the industrial, financial, consumer, construction and capital goods sectors.

The CAC 40, which takes its name from Paris Bourse's early automation system Cotation Assistée en Continu (Continuous Assisted Quotation), is a French stock market index. The index represents a capitalization-weighted measure of the 40 most significant values among the 100 highest market caps on the Paris Bourse. Its base value of 1,000 was set on 31 December 1987.