Beginning of Essay
Dow Jones & Company was founded in 1882 by Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is now the world's most vital business and financial news and information service. The DJIA is an index of 30 "blue-chip" US stocks. Th ....

Middle of Essay
.... of stocks. But over time the divisor has been changed to preserve historical continuity. If the Dow were an average,as it once was,it would be determined with simple math skills:by adding up the prices of its companies shares,dividing that by thirty. But the stock market can sometimes be to hectic for basic math. The most frequent reason for this is a stock split. Suppose a company in the DJIA issues one new share for each share outstanding. After this two- for-one "split," each share of stock is worth half what it was immediately before, other things being equal. But without an adjustment in the divisor, this split would produce a distortion in ....