The Dow

"The Dow" is conventional slang or shorthand for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of a number of stock market indices created by Charles Dow the founder of Dow Jones & Company and editor of the Wall Street Journal. Dow formed the index as a means of judging the performance of industrial elements of American stock markets. The Dow is the oldest market index in continuous use in the United States.

In its modern incarnation the Dow is comprised of the thirty largest and most widely held public companies in the United States. The "industrial" aspect of the index is now largely historical as the current components are not involved in heavy industry.

As a representative sampling, companies that appear on the index include 3M, ALCOA, AT&T, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Exxon, General Electric, General Motors, Home Depot, Intel, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer, Verizon, Wal-mart, and Walt Disney.

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