Article: HOW STUFF WORKS: What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

HowStuffWorks.com

It has been hard to miss the news about the stock market for the past couple of weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been setting new record highs. Which begs the question: What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average started back in the late 1800s. The creator of the index was Charles Dow, editor of The Wall Street Journal and one of the founders of Dow Jones & Co., a large American firm that publishes, among other things, The Wall Street Journal.

Charles Dow was looking for a shorthand way of seeing the health of America's industrial stocks, so he took 12 of the biggest industrial stocks at the time, looked up their stock prices each ...

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