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The Dow Jones Industrial Average
The most often-quoted stock market indicator is the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). In 1896, Charles Dow averaged closing prices of 12 representative stocks and the DJIA was christened. Since then it has been expanded to include 30 familiar blue chip companies to be more representative of the country’s largest companies.
The calculation is also changed to reflect stock splits. While this index is not reflective of the entire stock market, watching changes in the DJIA can help you stay abreast of current conditions.
Original Dow Stocks
|
American Cotton Oil |
Laclede Gas |
American Sugar |
National Lead |
American Tobacco |
North American |
Chicago Gas |
Tennessee Coal & Iron |
Distilling & Cattle Feeding |
U. S. Leather preferred |
General Electric |
U. S. Rubber |
Current DJIA Stocks
|
3M Company |
International Business Machines |
American Express Company |
J.P Morgan Chase & Company |
Amgen |
Johnson & Johnson |
Apple Inc. |
McDonald’s Corporation |
Boeing Company |
Merck & Company, Incorporated |
Caterpillar Incorporated |
Microsoft Corporation |
Chevron Corporation |
Nike |
Cisco Systems, Inc. |
Proctor & Gamble Company |
Coca-Cola Company |
Salesforce |
Disney |
Travelers Companies, Inc. |
DowDuPont |
UnitedHealth Group |
Exxon Mobil Corporation |
Verizon Communications Inc. |
Goldman Sachs |
Visa |
Home Depot Incorporated |
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. |
Intel Corporation |
Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated |
In September 2012, UnitedHealth Group replaced Kraft Foods. In September, 2013, Goldman Sachs, Nike and Visa replaced Alcoa, Bank of America and Hewlett Packard. In March, 2015, Apple replaced AT&T. In 2017, DowDuPont replaced DuPont when Dow Chemical merged with DuPont. In 2018, Walgreens Boots Alliance replaced General Electric. More recently, United Technologies and Pfizer were replaced by Salesforce and Amgen. In 2020, long-time DJIA stalwarts Raytheon and Honeywell were replaced with Pfizer and Amgen.
The DJIA is the most well-known stock market indicator. However, the S+P 500 and NASDAQ indexes include a broader selection of stocks including smaller companies.
