Business: Dowversifying

IBM and Merck join the club

To most investors the stock market is the Dow Jones industrial average, that index of 30 stocks whose price fluctuations are a barometer of good and bad times. But complaints are common that the Dow is not really a representative market measure. In hopes of improving it, the Wall Street Journal, which selects the stocks that make up the average, has revised it for the first time in 20 years. Result: the Dow now reflects almost 25% of the market value of all 1,566 New York Stock Exchange listings, vs. 19.3% before.

This was accomplished by replacing...

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