Keeping up with the Joneses

We probably hear or see the words “Dow Jones” every day of our lives, making Messrs Dow and Jones two of the most famous people ever. But who exactly were they and what does the term taken from their names mean?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (also called the “Dow Jones” or “The Dow”) is simply a measure of the average price of the largest shares on the New York Stock Exchange. It is named after journalists Charles Dow and Edward Jones, two of the founding members of a firm started in the late 1800’s to report stock market news to New York’s financial community (thankfully the name of the third founding member, Charles Bergstresser, was omitted from the title of their index). Their publication later became the famous Wall Street Journal, of which Charles Dow was the first editor.
The Dow Jones average is computed from the share price of thirty of the largest and most widely held public companies in the USA. The “industrial” portion of the name is largely historical as many of the thirty companies have little or nothing to do with traditional heavy industry. The individual components of the Dow are occasionally changed as market conditions warrant. Invented in 1896 entirely by Dow (Jones played no role), the index stood at 40.94 when it was first published. It stood at around the 29 000 mark in October 2022. With the current inclusion of only 30 shares from the some 2,800 listed on the NYSE, critics argue that the Dow is not a very accurate representation of overall market performance, even though it is the most cited and widely recognised of all stock market indices.