A. No. While many of the stocks in the Index are among the largest, there are also small relatively small companies, however, they are generally leaders within their industry groups.
S&P identifies the important industry groups within the U.S. economy and then allocates a representative sample of stocks within each group to the S&P 500. There are four major industry sectors within the Index: Industrial, Utilities, Financial, and Transportation.
Also, note that the S&P Index is a market value-weighted index (shares outstanding times stock price) in which each company's influence in Index performance is directly proportional to its market value.