what is dow jones

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), or simply the Dow, is a stock market index that tracks 30 large, publicly-owned blue-chip companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq. The Dow Jones & Company, founded in 1882 by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser, is one of the largest business and financial news companies in the world. The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity indexes, and it is considered to be a gauge of the broader U.S. economy. The Dow is a price-weighted index, which means that the value of the index is calculated by adding up the prices of the 30 stocks and dividing by a factor, rather than using market capitalization. The DJIAs composition can change over time based on economic trends. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is one of several ways to measure the performance of the stock market.