What Does the Dow Jones and Nasdaq Mean on the Front of My Yahoo/MSN homepage?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index of the 30 biggest companies. They are weighted for how big they are and it makes a complicated scale that equals 11369.94. This is divided unequally throughout the 30 companies. So yesterday on Yahoo! or MSN you probably saw a green .2% which means that the Dow Jones went up .2% which is rounded up from the actual .16%. This doesn't mean that all stocks went up; it just means that through the weight system the whole thing went up .16% or 17.93 points. For a more detailed explanation go to http://djindexes.com/mdsidx/index.cfm?event=showAverages

The NASDAQ is the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quote (www.nasdaq.com/). This is an actual exchange where you see in the movies people yelling and shouting on the floor. It trades 3300 listed companies. These are usually the 3300 best companies (which is arguable). The NASDAQ is also known to be filled with technology stocks. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is another giant stock exchange. The NASDAQ went up .5% which means the same as the DOW explanation.

So if you go to www.yahoo.com or www.msn.com you will now be able to tell what that means. Show off to your friends if you would like. Just tell them you got the information here.