Components of the DOW JONES Index
by Phillip McGann, 26/10/2006
The Dow Jones Index is probably the leading share index in the world today from a lay mans point of view. It is widely quoted in the media as a barometer of the performance of the US Share Market and by extension impacts on investor sentiment around the world of a day-to-day basis.
However it is a very un-representative index to use to measure the performance of the huge US market due to it’s narrow limited number of stocks (30 at any one time) and it’s “price-weighted”, which means the share’s weight in the index is not dictated by their actual capitalisation (size) as you would assume but by their actual share price which is a tad meaningless.
This can lead the Dow being a less than satisfactory barometer of US share performances, and as such a much more representative index – the S&P500 index of leading US companies - is used by money managers and professional investors as their Index or Benchmark of choice.
The current DOW components are a virtual who’s who of leading American brands as follows;
- ALCOA INC
- AMER INTL GROUP INC
- AMER EXPRESS INC
- BOEING CO
- CITIGROUP INC
- CATERPILLAR INC
- DU PONT E I DE NEM
- WALT DISNEY-DISNEY C
- GEN ELECTRIC CO
- GEN MOTORS
- HOME DEPOT INC
- HONEYWELL INTL INC
- HEWLETT PACKARD CO
- INTL BUSINESS MACH
- INTEL CP
- JOHNSON AND JOHNS DC
- JP MORGAN CHASE CO
- COCA COLA CO THE
- MCDONALDS CP
- 3M COMPANY
- ALTRIA GROUP INC
- MERCK CO INC
- MICROSOFT CP
- PFIZER INC
- PROCTER GAMBLE CO
- AT&T INC.
- UNITED TECH VERIZON COMMUN
- WAL MART STORES
- EXXON MOBIL CP
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