🏛️Dow Jones today

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was born in 1896 and tracks only 30 large US companies — Apple, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Goldman Sachs and peers. It is the oldest index still in use and, by tradition, the one the press cites when talking about the US stock market.

Despite the fame, it is less representative than the S&P 500. Thirty companies do not describe a whole economy, and the index leaves out much of the newer technology giants. Anyone measuring "the US market" looks at the S&P 500; the Dow survives on historical weight.

The word "Industrial" is a leftover: in 1896 the basket really was heavy industry. Today there are banks, retail, health care and technology — the label stayed, the contents changed.

Here is the quirk: the Dow is price-weighted. A US$500 stock weighs ten times more than a US$50 one, regardless of company size. A smaller company with an expensive share moves the Dow more than a giant with a cheap one.

Almost no modern index does this — the S&P 500, Nasdaq and Ibovespa all use market value. The Dow's methodology is widely seen as a historical oddity that survived on tradition and brand recognition.

The sum of prices is divided by a divisor adjusted at every stock split or component change, so those events do not create artificial jumps. That is why the index level is not the plain average of the 30 prices.

With a US brokerage account, the direct route is the DIA ETF, which replicates the index.

From Brazil, exposure usually comes through BDRs of the individual companies or international funds — there is no Dow ETF on B3 as widespread as IVVB11 is for the S&P 500. Either way, for someone earning in reais, investing in the Dow is also a bet on the dollar.