What is the DOW and NASDAQ?

Question

Investing for a Dummy

Answer 1

The Dow Jones is a multi sector tracking device using 30 stocks to track 30 sectors to get the best gauge of the overall market. These stocks are picked as the best gauge of their sector.

NASDAQ started out as a supplement to Wall Street, mostly starting in stocks that couldn't afford or didn't want to meet the demands of the NYSE. This included a lot of tech stock in the 90s. When techs took off, NASDAQ became a competitor to Wall Street's business. Now Wall Street is internally trying to become more like NASDAQ. AMEX has now taken the place of suplementing both Wall Street and Nasdaq.

Answer 2

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index of 30 large widely held stocks, and it's meant to represent the market as a whole. The Nasdaq is an exchange, like the New York Stock Exchange or London Stock Exchange, where companies pay to be listed so they can be traded. There's also the Nasdaq-100 index, which like the DJIA is an index of widely held companies that is meant to represent the market as a whole. All the stocks in the Nasdaq-100 index are traded on the Nasdaq exchange.

Answer 3

The Dow is the list of the best 30 blue chip stocks on the New yourk Stock Exchange
S&P 500 is the 500 best stocks.
The nasdaq is junior stocks in the process of starting business but haven't built up good enough to qualify for listing on the senior exchanges