Dow Jones: Market Overview & History

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Benchmark history

Dow Jones

History period

53,414.25−271.86 (−0.51%)

1 month: −0.9%
3 months: +5.0%
Year to date: +11.1%
12 months: +17.9%

Previous close · index points: 53,686.10
Session low · index points: 53,289.88
Session high · index points: 53,635.35
52-week low · index points: 45,057.28
52-week high · index points: 54,744.33

Understanding the benchmark

What does this index mean?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tracks 30 large U.S. companies. Its weighting depends on share prices, with adjustments for events such as stock splits. A higher-priced stock has more influence than a lower-priced one.

Why should I care?

Its long history makes it familiar in headlines. Translating a point move into a percentage helps you judge the scale of a day’s change and compare it with a different period.

What it leaves out.

Thirty companies are a narrow sample. Share-price weighting differs from weighting by the size of the business, so the Dow can tell a different story from broader indexes.

A question worth asking.

When I hear a large point move, what is the percentage change and which companies contributed?

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