The Swedish stock exchange has fined Credit Suisse First Boston two million kronor ($241,800) for an attempt to manipulate the market in the final days of 1998 (see Indexes, Issue 1).

Nordiska Fondkommission AB was fined one million kronor for its role.

The three CSFB traders involved in the trades were part of a group nicknamed the Flaming Ferraris, after their favorite cocktail. All have since been dismissed by the investment bank. Nordiska Fondkommission also has dismissed the broker involved.

It hit the market at the end of July, courtesy of Investec Guinness Flight and the ISDEX. One of the first Internet indexes in existence, with its inception in 1996, the Internet Stock Index, or ISDEX, is also one of the most widely followed of the plenitude of Internet indexes that have cropped up in recent years.

Index providers Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Standard & Poor's have gotten together to introduce a new "classification standard" for grouping industries for stock research and for use in stock-index investments.

John C. Bogle, Vanguard Group's founder and senior chairman, may be asked to retire from the giant fund group's board, The Wall Street Journal reported.

European investors want more from their market-index providers, but some fear they are getting less.

As companies merge, the number of stocks in broader European indexes is shrinking significantly and fund managers say that is hurting their efforts to diversify. But index providers claim it's too soon to lengthen their lists, even though "It's possible the broad indexes will soon become the blue-chip indexes," as Scott Stark has quipped. He is Stoxx Ltd.'s regional director for the U.K. and Ireland.

The London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange has recently launched a bevy of options and futures contracts on European indexes from both FTSE International and Morgan Stanley Capital International.