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Just thirty stocks, hand picked by committee by Dow Jones, with no rigorous requirements. Worse, it’s a “price-weighted” index, which is mathematically nonsensical. When calculating the Dow Jones Industrial Average, they take the actual stock prices of each stock, add them together, and divide them by a “Dow Divisor“. They don’t take into account how many shares outstanding; they don’t assess the market capitalization of each company. When a stock splits, they actually change the divisor for the whole index. It’s completely unclear what this index is designed to measure, other than financial illiteracy.
In fact, there is only one justification for the Dow Jones Industrial Average being calculated this way. Dow Jones explains it in this post on why Apple & Google are not included in the index. To save you some time, I’ll summarize: they have always done it this way, and if they change it, then they won’t be able to compare today’s nonsensical index to the nonsensical index from the last 100+ years.
Image source:get-on-the-carousel:
St Pancratius, Church of St Nikolaus, Switzerland. So glorious.
(Source: ritualknife, via johnnypayphone)
