Dow Jones Industrials

There are many different companies which make up the Dow Jones Industrials. This article will look at what companies are currently included and how the makeup of the index has changed over the years.

When talking about the Dow Jones Industrials, it is made up of only thirty companies. These are usually considered the blue chip stocks of America. The Dow Jones Industrials Index probably is the most widely known and followed index in the United States. Here is a sampling of the some of the different companies within the Down Jones Industrials: 3M, Alcoa, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Home Depot, IBM, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney, and Procter and Gamble. Simply from looking at that list, you can see that this encompasses a wide array of different industries. You can see retail shopping, entertainment, household products, beverages, and banking simply from taking a quick glance at that list. It can also be seen because many of those companies are not industrial as the title says. It was much more industrial when the index was first created back in 1896.

During its inception, only twelve stocks were included. The list eventually grew to the thirty stocks that the investing public is used to seeing today. Some of the original companies included such industrial companies as: General Electric, American Tobacco Company, American Sugar Company, and U.S. Leather Company. General Electric is the only one of the twelve original companies to remain a part of the Dow Jones Industrials. The list grew in 1916 to twenty companies. The index has grown steadily over time and reached a peak back in October of 2007 of 14,164.53. It has not come close to touching that as the stock market began its drastic decline about a year later. This peak happened two months before the current recession.

Hopefully this gives you a better idea of the composition of the Dow Jones Industrials. This index changes simply as the industries change over the years. It is meant to be an overall reflection of the economy and the different sectors that it encompasses. Some people are not enamored with the index because they have claimed that it is hard to show an accurate representation of an economy when it only encompasses thirty companies. These are also large cap stocks so there is no representation for small or mid cap companies. Even with the criticism, the index is closely monitored by large numbers of people everyday.

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