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The Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow is the index most people mean when they say "the market", and it's the one fewest people could describe if you asked them how it's built. Thirty companies. It launched in 1896 with twelve. And unlike essentially every index created since, it's price weighted, which means a company's influence depends on its share price rather than on how big the business is. A stock trading at $500 counts ten times as much as one at $50, whichever of the two is the larger company.
That sounds like a technicality and it isn't. It's why the Dow drifts away from the S&P 500 for years at a time, in both directions, and why a stock split can cut a company's importance to the index overnight without anything happening to the company.
This page gives you twelve years of annual returns with the S&P 500 alongside, an explanation of the weighting and why it survives, and the records the Dow still holds. Its worst day, -22.61% on 19 October 1987. Its best, +15.34% on 13 February 1933. And the 1929 to 1954 round trip, which is the Dow's statistic more than anyone else's. Four sources at the bottom, each dated. If a figure here matters to you, click through and see it in its own context rather than mine.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average launched in 1896 with twelve companies and is the oldest widely followed US equity index. It is price weighted, meaning a company's influence depends on its share price rather than its size, which is a construction nobody would choose today. Its worst day is -22.61% on 19 October 1987 and its best is +15.34% on 13 February 1933. In 2025 it returned +12.97%, against +17.88% for the S&P 500.
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