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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.173.2.68 (talk) at 22:12, 9 October 2008 (clarification language needed for "former components" sections: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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An event in this article is a March 29 selected anniversary (may be in HTML comment)

Clarification of 'Criticisms'

found a link which gives citation to the statement made with the correlation between the market as a whole and the dow jones average. http://189slash11.blogspot.com/2008/03/correlation-of-overall-market.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mtanttari (talkcontribs) 01:31, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Restored line

I restored the line in "History" detailing the former records of 2000, since they stood for so long. The current records are sufficiently covered, both in subsequent paragraphs and the final section. (Incidentally, the Dow has never reached 12,148, on a theoretical or actual basis.) 65.27.233.132 22:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)DAP[reply]

Co. & Inc.

Would anyone mind terribly if I changed the company names to their usual marques? (eg International Business Machines Corp. -> IBM, Boeing Co. -> Boeing, etc) - Lalala666 05:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Clarify

"Of those original twelve, ons", clarfiy in what way, in term of the name? - Jerryseinfeld 02:16, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think what it means is that the company GE is still the same, since the other companies have either shut down, been bought out, or have been changed.Chaz 01:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV?

"Because of these issues, the S&P 500 is becoming more widely quoted and used as a more realistic broad market performance indicator."

Is this accepted enough to be considered NPOV?-Grick(talk to me!) 22:47, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds fair to me; from a mathematical standpoint, 500 stocks (weighted by market cap) is a much better sample than 30 weighted by stock splits. Jon 13:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Calculation

Maybe someone can explain how the Dow Jones Index is calculated more precisely? Thanks, Abdull

Dow's Opening Price Each Day

What about information that the Dow's opening price each day does not reflect the true opening price of all its components (thus rendering it a rather useless indicator), because not all of the 30 components open at the same time? (Only a few of its 30 components open right at 9:30. Nevertheless, the Dow opens when its first components open, using the previous day's closing price for each of the components that haven't opened yet. This is why, unlike say the NASDAQ, the opening price of the Dow is almost always very close to its previous day's closing price, but in the first few minutes after opening will tend to move more widely--as more and more of its components open.)

208.63.191.20 21:16, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please add biggest one day gains

This would help balance the one day loses. Jon 13:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Black monday graph

That black monday graph is very misleading because it doesn't start at 0.. it did drop a lot, but we should represent the true scale, not an exaggeration like newspapers sometimes do. Mlm42 12:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that the point of the graph is to show the change in value over a period of time. The actual value of the Dow Jones does not matter but only the percentage drop. If a person talks about how the DJIA did for the year, the person would say that it is up or down X percent, not it opened the year at 10,000 and closed at 11,044. Also the scale is correct, it makes no claims of starting at zero, it says it starts at 1,700, and each interval is 1,000 points. I would like to comment though that it should display the entire year and not just a few months. Bear21 18:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)Bear21[reply]

Price-weighted

"The DJIA is criticized for being a price-weighted average, which gives relatively higher-priced stocks more influence over the average than their lower-priced counterparts"

I believe this statement is incorrect because Dow Jones weights each stock based in the inverse value of the stock. For example:

  • Stock A is valued at $100
  • Stock B is valued at $10

The weight of stock B will be 10 times the weight of stock A. If stock A rises $30, the overall average will increase by 1%. If stock B raises $3, the overall average will still increase by 1%.

This can easily be verified by downloading the daily spreadsheet from the link found in the Weightings section

--RichardKrog 21:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are mistaken. The "weightings" are not weights in the sense of a weighted average - in fact, they are not used at all in calculating the DJIA. I edited the "weightings" and "calculation" sections to explain what the weights are. The DJIA is simply the arithmetic average of the stock prices (it is scaled by a "divisor" that compensates for splits etc., but that scaling doesn't change the nature of the average). See www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/cont_detail/1,3206,1556+8705,00.html for an explanation. --169.230.94.21 23:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected and in awe that such an ubiquitous indicator is indeed price-weighted. Your edit makes it much clearer and removes a nasty word: "criticized"

--RichardKrog 05:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

$1 rise by any stock contributes exactly the same to the DJIA. In the direct computation of the average no stock has any more "weight" then the other. This is misleading so I removed it. What exactly is this "weight" that is being referred to? Ambiguous.

The dollars in the price of each stock have the same amount of weight. However, a percentage change in the price of a high-cost stock will impact the Dow more than the same percentage change to a low-cost stock. In a highly-simplified example, the Schoop Industrial Average (SIA) contains stock A and Stock B in Richard's example above. It is day one of the index, so the divisor is 2. Today, the SIA is (100 + 10) / 2 = 55.

The next day, an event occurs that makes stock A lose half its value. The SIA is now (50 + 10) / 2 = 30. If instead, stock B lost half its value, the SIA would instead be (100 + 5) / 2 = 52.5. As you can see, the price of a stock impacts its impact on the index. An alternative is a volume-weighted index, where the total market value of all outstanding shares is used as the weight. Hope this helps. Schoop (talk) 20:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Life-of-index graph?

I would strongly urge that someone with access to the data make a graph of the Dow over its entire existence. (With a logarithmic vertical axis, of course...) It would show the effects of the various wars, the crash of 1929, the black Monday of 1987, the dot-com bust etc. all in relation to each other. Wouldn't that be highly instructive? --169.230.94.21 00:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At the bottom of this article are links to Yahoo! graphs of the Dow since 1928, both log and linear, which would show all three events sufficiently. Also, StockCharts has historical charts going back to 1901. I'm not sure where to get a graph going back to 1896. 65.27.233.132 00:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)DAP[reply]

You can get a graph of the entire history of the Dow off the Dow Website (surprisingly enough). You can also find out at what level the Dow was on any day during its existence - its really quite a comprehensive resource to explore.jkm 08:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request for research

The following text was moved here from the article Ronnotel 14:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

the following needs validation, as i heard it some time ago and am unsure. Thanks, NormPierce@aol.com The proportionate bellwether significance of the DJIA in the US economy is that the total market capitalization of today's 30 component companies is about 28 percent of US wealth. The other two bellwether indices are the S&P 500 and Russell 2000, representing, respectively, xx and xx percent of US wealth.

Current event

I'm taking the current event tag off this article because this article does not and is not intended to provide updates on the current value of the DJIA. This is not a newspaper article. --SueHay 16:47, 11 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chronological Order of Listing

It is a little bit of work, and I may do it myself sometime, but if someone out there wants to look up and put all the Current Companies into Chronological Order based on when they joined for their current stint - I think that would definitely add to the article. With the example of General Electric, it was taken off the Index in 1898, but rejoined in 1907 - so in fact there is no company that has been part of the DJIA continuously since Day 1, but I believe that General Electric would still be the longest continuously serving member of the Index. Cheers. jkm 09:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, Fill In the Joining Dates - with the exact dates if possible - and also some of those companies that joined prior to 1928. Referenced from http://www.djindexes.com/DJIA110/docs/ins-and-outs.pdf

The Dow Jones Industrial Average consists of the following 30 companies:[1]

When fully completed, this Chronological List can be transferred onto the main page. jkm 09:39, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

oogie booger

North American Co.

In the list of the original twelve, why does the North American Company have '(Edison)' next to it? There no evidence that it had anything to do with Thomas Edison on the company's own page. Rojomoke 12:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"largest one-day percentage gain" fact is wrong.

The line starting "The largest one-day percentage gain in the index" doesn't seem to be right. Looking at the available data there's a gap between 03-Mar-1933 and 15-Mar-1933 of 12 days. The proportional return between these two dates is indeed 15.34% but it ain't a one-day return.

Alex 83.244.180.36 13:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FDR closed the markets for 12 days following his inauguration. The gain did, indeed, occur in a single session, although it probably did result from twelve days of traders' reflections and decisions.

DAP

What about inflation?

No mention of inflation adjustment. Lycurgus 20:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Points?

What are these "points". Why aren't they mentioned on Point? Are these the same as basis points? —Ben FrantzDale (talk) 02:04, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Link explains it:  http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/04/050704.asp  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.16.166.131 (talk) 20:57, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply] 

AT&T?

The article says "On April 8, 2004, another change occurred as International Paper, AT&T, and Eastman Kodak were replaced with Pfizer, Verizon, and AIG" but AT&T is still listedas a component. Which one is right?--Dr who1975 (talk) 19:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind... figured it out.--Dr who1975 (talk) 19:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello can this article please reflect the changes on Feb 11th 2008

Remove Altria, Honeywell Add Chevron, Bank of America. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.224.245 (talk) 02:27, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

rescaled averaged

At the beginning of the article it is said that is a scaled average, and this tow words are linked to Weighted mean. From what I read in the following hoverer, it seems not to be a weighted average, but just a simple average that is them divided for a normalizing factor (it is actually a rescaling not an average).

If it were a real weighted average (on the price) in the 2nd paragraph of the criticism section would not be true. The beginning of this paragraph ("the DJIA is criticized for being a price-weighted average") is trivially not in agreement with what is written just after and with what is written in Calculation section. -- AnyFile (talk) 09:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Opening Time

Moreover it is rather difficult for me to understand the part about the opening time ("Another issue with the Dow is that not all 30 components open at the same time in the morning.") Could someone clerify this point? Is it a normal thing that happens everyday or not? Do the two markets where the stocks are quoted (NYSE and NASDAQ) open at the same time? Or the different opening times happens only if, for some special reason, one single stock is delayed. -- AnyFile (talk) 09:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All Wikipedia Visitors should be able to decide whether to use any relevant external links; that decision should not be made for them by other Wikipedia Editors. I had entered some external links (details below) but they were removed by other Editors without consultation, even though registration is not required and access is Free to the results of detailed Technical Analysis of all the constituents of Dow Jones Industrial Average Index. If you consider that these external links may be of interest to other Visitors, please add them to the ‘article’ page.

To access the removed external links, click on the ‘history’ tab of ‘article’ page then click to view Revision (236130999) 23:45 3 September 2008 by TechAnalysis. Scroll to ‘External Links’ section and click on one of the removed links.

TechAnalysis (talk) 17:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout bill

Should it really be called the Bush Administration's bill? It's not as though it went directly from the White House, unchanged, for a vote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.64.153.107 (talk) 20:09, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trend lines

A log-scale graphic is nice to have, but can we use one without the arbitrary "trend lines"? Several of them touch the graph at only one or two points, which any geometer knows is hardly a feat. It's misleading to show five parallel lines, as if to illustrate strong, clear long-term trends, if the trends are projected onto the data rather than drawn from it. Dzhim (talk) 04:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

clarification language needed for "former components" sections

as currently presented, the "former components" suggests that any component changes have only occurred commencing in 1999 (and yes i see, but suspect others on a quick read may not, the "Main article: Historical components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average" reference).

two solutions.

1. emend 2nd paragraph's first sentence to lead with "in the most recent changes, in 1999..."

2. remove all recent changes and just present the 1st paragraph (and the "Main article: Historical components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average" reference).

my preference is for option 2. it's clearer and eliminates any misleading assumption (i.e., that the only changes are 1999 and later). it's easier article maintenance (i.e., 2 articles (this one and the sub article on changes) don't have to be updated when a component is changed).--68.173.2.68 (talk) 22:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]