Dow Jones Industrial Average

Dow Jones Industrial Average

Historical logarithmic graph of the DJIA from 1896 to 2018
Foundation	February 16, 1885; 139 years ago (1885-02-16) (as DJA)[1] May 26, 1896 (1896-05-26) (as DJIA)[2]
Operator	S&P Dow Jones Indices
Exchanges	New York Stock Exchange Nasdaq
Trading symbol	^DJI $INDU .DJI DJIA
Constituents	30
Type	Large cap
Market cap	US$19.5 trillion (as of December 31, 2024[update])[3]
Weighting method	Price-weighted index
Website	www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/

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.

The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity indexes. It is price-weighted, unlike other common indexes such as the Nasdaq Composite or S&P 500, which use market capitalization.^[4][5] The DJIA also contains fewer stocks, which could exhibit higher risk; however, it could be less volatile when the market is rapidly rising or falling due to its components being well-established large-cap companies.^[6]

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 0.163 as of November 2024^[update]. 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 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.