This month the Barron’s 400 Index is celebrating its third anniversary and to commemorate the occasion we’re letting all our web site’s visitors grade all of its 400 components for free. Through the end of the month all visitors to MarketGrader.com will be able to see all of the index’s current selections and perform a complete analysis of each one. Just go to the components page of the Barron’s 400 section and click on any of the names to view our analysis of each company.

Introduced on September 3rd, 2007 on the cover of Barron’s, the index, dubbed ‘Market Beater’ in the launch story, managed to outperform the S&P 500, the Dow Industrials and the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market index in the last three years. This was highlighted this weekend on Barron’s in Setting the Standard, where you may read about the index’s construction methodology and its most recent rebalance, which took place at the close of trading last Friday. The B400 methodology was co-developed by MarketGrader and the index’s selections are based on our overall grade. The same research used in the construction of the index is available to all our subscribers.

We’ll be posting additional pieces on B400 through the end of the month as we continue to celebrate its birthday.