What is Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Index?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 30 blue-chip companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.

The name, Dow Jones, came from Charles Dow, co-founder of Dow Jones & Company, and his business associate, statistician Edward Jones.

Components of Dow Jones index are maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, jointly owned by S&P Global, the CME Group, and News Corp. A committee meets regularly to decide if any components need to be replace.

The value of Dow Jones index is calculated using the price-weight method, which can be described as:

Index Value = (1/Dow Divisor) ∑ (Stock Price)

where: 
  Dow Divisor = 30, originally in 1896; 0.1627, now in 2025

The Dow Divisor started with 30 to generate the average price of all 30 stock prices. But it has been adjusted to compensate the impact each time when a component stock conducted a split.

If we look at the Dow Jones index value and its component stock prices on a given date, we can figure out the Dow Divisor easily. Here is the the Dow Jones index value on Jan 31, 2025, and the Dow divisor:

Stock Name                Ticker   Price  Weight
-----------------------   ------  ------  ------
Goldman Sachs Group Inc       GS  640.40   8.84%
United Health Group Inc      UNH  542.49   7.49%
Microsoft Corp              MSFT  415.06   5.73%
Home Depot Inc                HD  411.98   5.69%
Caterpillar Inc              CAT  371.44   5.13%
Sherwin Williams Co          SHW  358.16   4.94%
Salesforce Inc               CRM  341.70   4.72%
Visa Inc Class A Shares        V  341.80   4.72%
American Express Co          AXP  317.45   4.38%
McDonald S Corp              MCD  288.70   3.98%
Amgen Inc                   AMGN  285.42   3.94%
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co       JPM  267.30   3.69%
Intl Business Machines Corp  IBM  255.70   3.53%
Travelers Cos Inc            TRV  245.18   3.38%
Apple Inc                   AAPL  236.00   3.26%
Amazon.com Inc              AMZN  237.68   3.28%
Honeywell International Inc  HON  223.72   3.09%
Boeing Co                     BA  176.52   2.44%
Procter & Gamble Co           PG  165.99   2.29%
Chevron Corp                 CVX  149.19   2.06%
3m Co                        MMM  152.20   2.10%
Johnson & Johnson            JNJ  152.15   2.10%
Nvidia Corp                 NVDA  120.07   1.66%
Walt Disney Co               DIS  113.06   1.56%
Merck & Co. Inc.             MRK   98.82   1.36%
Walmart Inc                  WMT   98.16   1.35%
Nike Inc Cl B                NKE   76.90   1.06%
Coca Cola Co                  KO   63.48   0.88%
Cisco Systems Inc           CSCO   60.60   0.84%
Verizon Communications Inc    VZ   39.39   0.54%

Total Price                     7,246.71    100%
Index Value                    44,544.66  
Divisor                           0.1627 

Some historical values of the Dow Jones index are listed below:

2024-12-31  42,544.22
2023-12-29  37,689.54
2022-12-30  33,147.25
2021-12-31  36,338.30
2020-12-31  30,606.48
2019-12-31  28,538.44
2018-12-31  23,327.46
2017-12-29  24,719.22
2016-12-30  19,762.60
2015-12-31  17,425.03

For the current value of the Dow Jones index, see the ^DJI quote chart on Yahoo Finance.

⇒ DJI: ^DJI - Dow Jones Industrial Average

⇐ Relation of S&P 500 and ^VIX Index

⇑ US Market Indices

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