What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average ( DJIA )?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a price-weighted index composed of 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in the United States. The “industrial” portion of the name is largely historical – many of the 30 modern components have little to do with heavy industry. To compensate for the effects of stock splits and other adjustments, it is currently a scaled average, not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks – the actual average of prices is multipled by a scale factor, which changes over time, to generate the value of the index.
