The major stock indexes kicked off the year with sluggish performance but began to turn upward in the middle of last week. The easiest way to invest in the Dow may be to buy shares in State Street Global Advisors’ SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust, which trades under the ticker symbol DIA. The index closed above 18,000 on Dec. 23, and then closed its high for the year at 18,053.71 on Dec. 26.
1904 (0 record closes)
The value of the index can also be calculated as the sum of the stock prices of the companies included in the index, divided by a factor, which is approximately 0.152 as of April 2024[update]. The factor is changed whenever a constituent company undergoes a stock split so that the value of the index is unaffected by the stock split. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (/ˈdaʊ/), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
Admittedly the steady hands of the Federal Reserve chairs during those eras likely had greater sway over the success of the markets than whoever was in the White House. The longest bull market in history lasted about 11 years, starting in March 2009 and ending in February 2020. The semiconductor company, with a total market value topping $3 trillion, reports its latest results on Wednesday. Wall Street’s mania around artificial intelligence has helped propel a 159% gain for the stock this year. The benchmark S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite each finished 0.2% higher after drifting between small gains and losses most of the day. The benchmark S&P 500 is now within 0.8% of its record high high powerful cryptocurrency miners released set last month.
- This history of the Dow since the Great Depression demonstrates how stock market fluctuations reflect the natural stages of the business cycle.
- The downturn reflected a 10-month recession, from July 1953 to May 1954, during the military demobilization following the Korean War.
- The largest single-day drop, percentage-wise, that the Dow has had occurred when the market crashed on Oct. 19, 1987, Black Monday.
- The average closed at 2,999.75 on Monday, July 16, 1990, and closed unchanged the following day;[17] however, it would take until April 17 of the next year for the Dow to finally close above 3,000.
The Dow Jones industrial average finished above 40,000 for the first time on Friday afternoon, doubling where the index hit shortly after Donald Trump became the 45th president. Shares for most of the firms tracked by Dow rose in value on Friday, led by Intel (4.7%), IBM (2.8%) and Home Depot (2.6%), while shares for Walmart, Boeing and JPMorgan Chase fell slightly. The close was just shy of a previous record close of 40,003 set on May 17. It hit an all-time high of 34,200.67 points on April 16, 2021.
The chart below shows four of those closing records, as they increase by the thousand. The index closed above 23,000 on Oct. 18, 2017; slightly more than a month later, it broke 24,000. The Dow had two streaks lasting more than 10 days, which had not occurred since 1959. The Dow responded with new highs throughout the latter part of 2019, even though trade negotiations had broken down until November. It hit a milestone on July 11, closing above 27,000, and then another on Nov. 15, closing above 28,000 (in the chart below, milestones are noted).