Stock market today: Dow closes at record, S&P 500, Nasdaq rise as Wall Street notches strong weekly gains

While the Dow includes a range of companies, all can be described as blue chip companies with consistently stable earnings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is a stock market index that tracks 30 large, publicly owned blue-chip companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq. The Dow Jones is named after Charles Dow, who created the index in 1896 with his business partner, Edward Jones.

1. Small-cap stocks saw outsized gains on Friday and over the course of the trading week.
2. Stocks closed higher on Wall Street, giving the market its fifth gain in a row and notching another record high for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
3. Vistra leads the XLU for the week and the S&P 500 for the year with its more than 300% rise in 2024.
4. The index climbed 1.8% on Friday, raising its weekly advance to nearly 4.5%.
5. In this manner, a company with a higher stock price but a smaller market cap would have more weight than a company with a smaller stock price but a larger market cap, which would poorly reflect the true size of a company.

That marks a turn from last week, when Wall Street’s postelection rally stalled. Intuit fell 5.7% after the TurboTax parent projected second-quarter revenue and profit below Wall Street estimates on Thursday. “I’ve been looking for this leadership change to go from technology to everything else. Small caps are acting much better, values are acting better,” said Mark Hackett, Chief of Investment Research at Nationwide. AI bellwether Nvidia also slipped 3.2% in choppy trading following its quarterly forecast on Wednesday. Investing in the DJIA is possible via index funds as well as via derivatives such as option contracts and futures contracts.

Dollar index surges to two-year high, on track for eight straight gains

The stock has also seen massive gains in 2024, soaring more than 229% year to date. This puts the XLU on pace for its third straight weekly gain and less than 1% from its all-time high from mid-October. The stock is how to become a currency broker on track for its third straight positive day and posted a new intraday high, surpassing a level set in June. “The stock market is living up to its historical dynamic of seasonal strength in November,” Schein said. The domestically focused small-cap Russell 2000 index rose 1.8% and outperformed large-cap indexes. The major gauges closed out the week with wins of over 1%, despite getting off to a lackluster start as the post-election rally stalled.

Dow Jones 30 Industrial

In early 1981, the index broke above 1,000 several times, but then retreated. After closing above 2,000 in January 1987,44 the largest one-day percentage drop occurred on Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the average fell 22.61%. The value of the index can also be calculated as the sum of the stock prices of the companies included in the index, divided by a factor, which is approximately 0.163 as of November 2024update. The factor is changed whenever a constituent company undergoes a stock split so that the value of the index is unaffected by the stock split. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a stock index of 30 U.S. blue-chip large-cap companies, which has become synonymous with the American stock market as a whole.

Small caps outperform in session and week

Expectations on the Federal Reserve’s policy move in December have recently swayed between a pause and a cut, as investors weighed the likely impact of Trump’s plans on price pressures. Meanwhile, Alphabet fell 1.7% following Thursday’s 4% drop, as the Department of Justice argued to a judge the company was monopolizing online search. Companies in the DJIA are also chosen by a committee and are balanced to try to represent the state of the overall economy. This means that certain companies may be added to or deleted from the index periodically, and it’s difficult to predict when or which stock will be changed. Despite its limitations, however, the Dow still holds a special place in American finance.

Consumer Discretionary (XLY), Industrials (XLI), and Financials (XLF) led the sector gains this week, with XLF closing at an all-time high. Gap soared after reporting quarterly results that easily beat Trader buys 36 million in copper analysts’ estimates. Texas Pacific Land, based in West Texas, has a market cap of around $35 billion. Mara Holdings, which is the second-largest holder of bitcoin among public companies, was also flat. On the other hand, Booking Holdings was among a handful of stocks restricting gains.

That puts the stock on pace for its biggest weekly gain on record. Analyst Tom Nikic opened coverage at a buy rating and added the stock to the firm’s “conviction list.” Nikic’s $218 price target implies shares can rally nearly 20% from where the stock closed Thursday. While tech struggled, bitcoin neared the long-awaited milestone of $100,000. Small-cap stocks also showed strength this week, with the Russell 2000 climbing 1.8% in Friday’s session to finish the week up by roughly 4.5%. Friday’s moves marked a continuation of a trend where investors shift exposure from tech to names in more economically sensitive corners of the market. That can fxcm reviews and user ratings explain why the industrial and consumer discretionary sectors led the S&P 500 higher, while communication services was the worst performer.

The DJIA is the second-oldest U.S. market index after the Dow Jones Transportation Average. The DJIA was designed to serve as a proxy for the health of the broader U.S. economy. Often referred to simply as the Dow, it is one of the most-watched stock market indexes in the world.

The DJIA launched in 1896 with just 12 companies, primarily in the industrial sector. They included railroads, cotton, gas, sugar, tobacco, and oil. Since then, it’s changed many times—the very first came three months after the 30-component index launched.