Dow Jones Averages Overview

The Dow Jones Industrial, Transportation and Utilities Averages are maintained and reviewed by editors of The Wall Street Journal. For the sake of continuity, composition changes are rare, and generally occur only after corporate acquisitions or other dramatic shifts in a component's core business. When such an event necessitates that one component be replaced, the entire index is reviewed. As a result, multiple component changes are often implemented simultaneously.

While there are no rules for component selection, a stock typically is added only if it has an excellent reputation, demonstrates sustained growth, is of interest to a large number of investors and accurately represents the sector(s) covered by the average.

Unlike the DJTA and DJUA, which include only transportation and utilities stocks, the DJIA is not limited to traditionally defined industrial stocks. Instead, the index serves as a measure of the entire U.S. market, covering such diverse industries as financial services, technology, retail, entertainment and consumer goods.

Calculation

The Dow Jones averages are unique in that they are price weighted rather than market capitalization weighted. Their component weightings are therefore affected only by changes in the stocks' prices, in contrast with other indexes' weightings that are affected by both price changes and changes in the number of shares outstanding.

When the averages were initially created, their values were calculated by simply adding up the component stocks' prices and dividing by the number of components. Later, the practice of adjusting the divisor was initiated to smooth out the effects of stock splits and other corporate actions.

The current divisors values are as follows: DJIA 0.123017848, DJTA 0.20882618 and DJUA 1.42340771.