by Viktor Ka
The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index is tracked at the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker DJI (NYSE: DJI) and is maintained and reviewed by editors of The Wall Street Journal. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index is also called the DJIA or informally the Dow Jones or the Dow 30 or simply the Dow. The Dow index is one of the most watched indexes over the world, which was created together with several other stock market indices in the nineteenth century by Charles Dow (Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder). It is the oldest U.S. stock market index, after the Dow Jones Transportation Average and one of the most used indexes in the technical analysis.

The first time the DJIA index was published in Customer's Afternoon Letter on May 26, 1896, and at that time the Dow represented the average of twelve stocks from various important American industries. The number of stocks included into the index was increased to 20 in 1916 and in 1928 this number was increased to 30 stocks.

Now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average consists of 30 of the biggest public companies in the United States. Majority of these companies have nothing to do with the heavy industry; furthermore the “industrial” part of the DJIA name is just historically inherited. The Dow index is a price-weighted index and it is a compiled index as a way to gauge the performance of the of America's stock markets.

As of March 2008 al companies included in the DJI index are traded on the New York Exchange (NYSE) with exception of the Microsoft (MSFT) which was added to DJI in 1999 and is traded on the NASDAQ.

As of March 2008 the Dow Jones Industrials Average consists of the following 30 companies. This is outdated list and not a current list of the companies from the DJI index. Yet, it may give you the approximate picture of what kind of public companies are selected to be included into DJI index. For most current correct listing I would recommend visiting Dow Jones official web site.

1. 3M
2. Alcoa
3. American Express
4. American International Group
5. AT&T
6. Bank of America
7. Boeing
8. Caterpillar
9. Chevron Corporation
10. Citigroup
11. Coca-Cola
12. DuPont
13. ExxonMobil
14. General Electric
15. General Motors
16. Hewlett-Packard
17. Home Depot
18. Intel
19. IBM
20. Johnson & Johnson
21. JPMorgan Chase
22. McDonald's
23. Merck
24. Microsoft
25. Pfizer
26. Procter & Gamble
27. United Technologies Corporation
28. Verizon Communications
29. Wal-Mart
30. Walt Disney

Visit QQQQ and SPY Options Trading Signals to learn about trading systems based on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 technical analysis.

Article Source: Dow Jones Industrials