Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (/ˈdaʊ/), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
"Dow Jones index" redirects here. For other indices, see Dow Jones.Foundation
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The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity indexes. Many professionals consider it to be an inadequate representation of the overall U.S. stock market compared to a broader market index such as the S&P 500. The DJIA includes only 30 large companies. It is price-weighted, unlike stock indices, which use market capitalization. Furthermore, the DJIA does not use a weighted arithmetic mean.[4][5][6][7]
The value of the index can also be calculated as the sum of the stock prices of the companies included in the index, divided by a factor, which is approximately 0.152 as of April 2024. The factor is changed whenever a constituent company undergoes a stock split so that the value of the index is unaffected by the stock split.
First calculated on May 26, 1896,[2] the index is the second-oldest among U.S. market indices, after the Dow Jones Transportation Average. It was created by Charles Dow, co-founder of both The Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones & Company, and named after him and his business associate, statistician Edward Jones.
The index is maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, an entity majority-owned by S&P Global. Its components are selected by a committee. The ten components with the largest dividend yields are commonly referred to as the Dogs of the Dow. As with all stock prices, the prices of the constituent stocks and consequently the value of the index itself are affected by the performance of the respective companies as well as macroeconomic factors.
As of February 26, 2024, the components of the DJIA have changed 58 times since its beginning on May 26, 1896. General Electric had the longest continuous presence on the index, beginning in the original index in 1896 and ending in 2018. Changes to the index since 1991 are as follows:
Assessment[edit]
Issues with market representation[edit]
With the inclusion of only 30 stocks, critics such as Ric Edelman argue that the DJIA is an inaccurate representation of overall market performance compared to more comprehensive indexes such as the S&P 500 Index or the Russell 3000 Index. Additionally, the DJIA is criticized for being a price-weighted index, which gives higher-priced stocks more influence over the average than their lower-priced counterparts, but takes no account of the relative industry size or market capitalization of the components. For example, a $1 increase in a lower-priced stock can be negated by a $1 decrease in a much higher-priced stock, even though the lower-priced stock experienced a larger percentage change. In addition, a $1 move in the smallest component of the DJIA has the same effect as a $1 move in the largest component of the average. For example, during September–October 2008, former component AIG's reverse split-adjusted stock price collapsed from $22.76 on September 8 to $1.35 on October 27; contributing to a roughly 3,000-point drop in the index.[81]
As of June 2021, Goldman Sachs and UnitedHealth Group are among the highest-priced stocks in the average and therefore have the greatest influence on it. Alternately, Cisco Systems and Coca-Cola are among the lowest-priced stocks in the average and have the least sway in the price movement.[82] Critics of the DJIA and most securities professionals recommend the market-capitalization weighted S&P 500 Index or the Wilshire 5000, the latter of which includes most publicly listed U.S. stocks, as better indicators of the U.S. stock market.
Correlation among components[edit]
A study between the correlation of components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average compared with the movement of the index finds that the correlation is higher when the stocks are declining. The correlation is lowest in a time when the average is flat or rises a modest amount.[83]