Dow Jones

Dow Jones is an index that 30 large publicly owned companies based in the United States have traded during a standard trading session in the stock market.It is the second oldest U.S. market index after the Dow Jones Transportation Average.The Dow Jones Industrial Average also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow Jones Industrial, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow. It was founded on May 26, 1896, and is now owned by Dow Jones Indexes, which has its majority owned by the CME Group.The index was created to measure the performance of the industrial sector of the American stock market. Dow Jones Transportation Average was also created by Dow

The Industrial portion of the name is largely historical, as many of the modern 30 components.Its have little or nothing to do with traditional heavy industry. The average is price-weighted, and to compensate for the effects of stock splits and other adjustments, it is currently a scaled average. The value of the Dow is not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks, but rather the sum of the component prices divided by a divisor, which changes whenever one of the component stocks has a stock split or stock dividend, so as to generate a consistent value for the index.

Along with the NASDAQ Composite, the S&P 500 Index, and the Russell 2000 Index, the Dow is among the most closely watched U.S. benchmark indices tracking targeted stock market activity. Equivalent indices, such as the FT 30, have largely become redundant in favour of more representative and neutral indices, such as the S&P 100. Although Dow compiled the index to gauge the performance of the industrial sector within the American economy, the index's performance continues to be influenced by not only corporate and economic reports, but also by domestic and foreign political events such as war and terrorism, as well as by natural disasters that could potentially lead to economic harm. Components of the Dow trade on both the NASDAQ OMX and the NYSE Euronext, two of the largest stock market companies. Derivatives of the Dow trade on the Chicago Board Options Exchange and through the CME Group, the world's largest futures exchange company, which owns 90% of the indexing business founded by Dow Jones, including the Industrial Average.

 In this Dow Jones,30 components comprising from various Industries.

Telecommunication Industry 

AT&T
Verizon 

Pharmaceuticals 

Johnson & Johnson
Merck
Pfizer
Banking

Bank of America
JPMorgan Chase

Computers and technology

Hewlett-Packard'
IBM

Conglomerate

3M
General Electric
United Technologies Corporation

Retail

Wal-Mart

Consumer goods

Procter & Gamble

Oil & gas

ExxonMobil
Chevron Corporation

Beverages

Coca-Cola

Software

Microsoft 

Aluminum

Alcoa

Consumer finance

American Express

Aerospace and defense

Boeing

Construction and Mining Equipment

Caterpillar 

Computer Networking

Cisco Systems

Chemical industry

DuPont

Home improvement Retailer

The Home Depot

Fast food

McDonald's

Semiconductors

Intel

Insurance

Travelers

Managed health care

UnitedHealth Group

Retail

Wal-Mart

Broadcasting and Entertainment

Walt Disney