Daily Index Insights offers a concise two-minute read on the latest news and trends in index markets. This resource includes performance data from S&P Dow Jones Indices across equities, fixed income, multi-asset, commodities, and factors. Our daily insights are designed to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of market movements, empowering you to make informed decisions based on the most current indices data and analysis.
“The man who begins to speculate in stocks with the intention of making a fortune usually goes broke, whereas the man who trades with a view of getting good interest on his money sometimes gets rich.”
Charles Dow (November 6, 1851 – December 4, 1902)
Happy 130th Birthday to the Dow Jones Industrial Average®! Created by Charles Dow, it now stands as a price-weighted index tracking 30 of the most prominent blue-chip companies driving the U.S. economy. Charles Dow’s very first index in 1884 consisted of just 11 stocks, mostly railroads, the undisputed economic giants of the era. However, as the U.S. rapidly industrialized, Dow realized that transportation alone only painted a partial picture of the economy. To capture the new, "speculative" manufacturing companies driving American growth, he officially launched the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a daily feature in The Wall Street Journal. Today’s edition pays tribute to the origins of this historic index. Here is your daily dashboard.
- On its first day of publication, May 26, 1896, the Dow® debuted at a value of just 40.94. The initial calculation was elegantly simple: Dow added up the stock prices of 12 large-cap companies and divided the sum by 12. The original roster tracked burgeoning sectors like sugar, tobacco, leather, and gas, featuring names like American Cotton Oil, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, and General Electric (the longest-surviving original member, which remained until 2018). While the constituents have evolved over the last 130 years from rubber and coal to silicon and software, the Dow® remains the definitive historical record of American economic growth.
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The Dow has been a constant through economic crises, wars, and technological revolutions. It has therefore experienced plenty of ups and downs in its 130-year history. Its worst day came on December 12th, 1914, when the New York Stock Exchange reopened after being closed for over four months to prevent a market panic due to the outbreak of war in Europe. This merely postponed the panic, as the market fell 24% in a single day on reopening. The Dow's best day also came on a day the market reopened after a hiatus, this time on March 15th, 1933, following Franklin D. Roosevelt's emergency bank holiday at the height of the Great Depression. The market surged on reopening, reflecting increased optimism that the banking system had been stabilized. This optimism was well placed, as the market surged over the coming years, though a sharp setback in 1937–38 and rising pre-WWII tensions in Europe would temper the recovery.
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To celebrate 130 years of the Dow, the team here at S&P Dow Jones Indices have pulled together a page with lots more information, including a video, quiz, and some fantastic pieces by our U.S. Equity team, all available here.
- And if you’ve made it this far… you may be interested to know that, due to its elegantly simple price-weighted design, replicating the Dow today requires buying just one share of each of its 30 constituents, an investment of $8,215.44 as of Friday’s close. In stark contrast, replicating a market-cap-weighted index like the S&P 500® to institutional tolerance using whole shares would require upwards of $10 million.
