What affects the performance of the FTSE 100 and the DOW JONES ?
Both of these indexes reflect the stocks within them. For the FTSE 100, that means 100 British stocks, such as British Airways, Lloyds TSB and Vodafone. Some stocks may be up, some down (depending on the news of the day), but the index will reflect what the total of those moves are. For the Dow, there are 30 stocks, including Boeing, Citigroup and Verizon. It is a price-weighted index, meaning that stocks with higher prices have a greater weighting. Most other indexes are weighted by market cap (price x outstanding shares).
