Contract History

If you are interested in trading Dow Industrial Index futures it is helpful to become familiar with the description of the Dow Industrial Index market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is one of several stock market indices that was created to show how certain stocks have traded. The average is computed from the stock prices of 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in the United States. The "industrial" portion of the name is largely historical. Many of the 30 modern components have little to do with traditional heavy industry. The average is price-weighted.

In order to compensate for the effects of stock splits and other adjustments, the DJIA is currently a scaled average, not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks. To calculate the value of the index, the sum of the component prices is divided by a divisor, which changes whenever one of the component stocks has a stock split or stock dividend. Since the divisor is currently less than one, the value of the index is higher than the sum of the component prices.