Dow, or the acronym DOW, may refer to:
Dow Jones & Company, Inc. is an American publishing and financial information firm that has been owned by News Corp since 2007.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 30 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. Although it is one of the most commonly followed equity indices, many consider the Dow to be an inadequate representation of the overall U.S. stock market compared to broader market indices such as the S&P 500 Index or Russell 3000 because it only includes 30 large cap companies, is not weighted by market capitalization, and does not use a weighted arithmetic mean.
A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manufactured products, such as cocoa, fruit and sugar. Hard commodities are mined, such as gold and oil. Investors access about 50 major commodity markets worldwide with purely financial transactions increasingly outnumbering physical trades in which goods are delivered. Futures contracts are the oldest way of investing in commodities. Futures are secured by physical assets. Commodity markets can include physical trading and derivatives trading using spot prices, forwards, futures, and options on futures. Farmers have used a simple form of derivative trading in the commodity market for centuries for price risk management.
The S&P 500, or simply the S&P, is a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices, and many consider it to be one of the best representations of the U.S. stock market. The average annual total return of the index, including dividends, since inception in 1926 has been 9.8%; however, there were several years where the index declined over 30%. The index has posted annual increases 70% of the time.
In finance, a futures contract is a standardized legal agreement to buy or sell something at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future, between parties not known to each other. The asset transacted is usually a commodity or financial instrument. The predetermined price the parties agree to buy and sell the asset for is known as the forward price. The specified time in the future—which is when delivery and payment occur—is known as the delivery date. Because it is a function of an underlying asset, a futures contract is a derivative product.
A commodity price index is a fixed-weight index or (weighted) average of selected commodity prices, which may be based on spot or futures prices. It is designed to be representative of the broad commodity asset class or a specific subset of commodities, such as energy or metals. It is an index that tracks a basket of commodities to measure their performance. These indexes are often traded on exchanges, allowing investors to gain easier access to commodities without having to enter the futures market. The value of these indexes fluctuates based on their underlying commodities, and this value can be traded on an exchange in much the same way as stock index futures.
The Dow Jones Transportation Average is a U.S. stock market index from S&P Dow Jones Indices of the transportation sector, and is the most widely recognized gauge of the American transportation sector. It is the oldest stock index still in use, even older than its better-known relative, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).
In economics and finance, an index is a statistical measure of change in a representative group of individual data points. These data may be derived from any number of sources, including company performance, prices, productivity, and employment. Economic indices track economic health from different perspectives. Influential global financial indices such as the Global Dow, and the NASDAQ Composite track the performance of selected large and powerful companies in order to evaluate and predict economic trends. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 primarily track U.S. markets, though some legacy international companies are included. The consumer price index tracks the variation in prices for different consumer goods and services over time in a constant geographical location, and is integral to calculations used to adjust salaries, bond interest rates, and tax thresholds for inflation. The GDP Deflator Index, or real GDP, measures the level of prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy. Market performance indices include the labour market index/job index and proprietary stock market index investment instruments offered by brokerage houses.
Euronext Paris is France's securities market, formerly known as the Paris Bourse, which merged with the Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Brussels exchanges in September 2000 to form Euronext NV, which is the second largest exchange in Europe behind the United Kingdom's London Stock Exchange Group.
The S&P GSCI serves as a benchmark for investment in the commodity markets and as a measure of commodity performance over time. It is a tradable index that is readily available to market participants of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The index was originally developed in 1991, by Goldman Sachs. In 2007, ownership transferred to Standard & Poor's, who currently own and publish it. Futures of the S&P GSCI use a multiple of 250. The index contains a much higher exposure to energy than other commodity price indices such as the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index.
The Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM) is a broadly diversified commodity price index distributed by Bloomberg Indexes. The index was originally launched in 1998 as the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index (DJ-AIGCI) and renamed to Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index (DJ-UBSCI) in 2009, when UBS acquired the index from AIG. On July 1, 2014, the index was rebranded under its current name.
The Thomson Reuters/CoreCommodity CRB Index is a commodity futures price index. It was first calculated by Commodity Research Bureau, Inc. in 1957 and made its inaugural appearance in the 1958 CRB Commodity Year Book.
SPDR funds are a family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) traded in the United States, Europe, and Asia-Pacific and managed by State Street Global Advisors (SSGA). Informally, they are also known as Spyders or Spiders. SPDR is a trademark of Standard and Poor's Financial Services LLC, a subsidiary of S&P Global. SPDR means Standard and Poor's Depository Receipt.
The Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity Index (DBLCI) was launched in February 2003. It tracks the performance of six commodities in the energy, precious metals, industrial metals and grain sectors. The DBLCI has constant weightings for each of the six commodities and the index is rebalanced annually in the first week of November. Consequently, the weights fluctuate during the year according to the price movement of the underlying commodity futures.
In May 2006, Deutsche Bank launched a new set of commodity index products called the Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodities Indices Optimum Yield, or DBLCI-OY. The DBLCI-OY indices are available for 24 commodities drawn from the energy, precious metals, industrial metals, agricultural and livestock sectors. A DBLCI-OY index based on the DBLCI benchmark weights is also available and the optimum yield technology has also been applied to the energy, precious metals, industrial metals and agricultural sector indices. Like the DBLCI, the DBLCI-OY is available in USD, EUR, GBP and JPY on a hedged and un-hedge basis. The DBLCI-OY is rebalanced on the fifth index business day of November when each commodity is adjusted to its base weight. The DBLCI-OY is also listed as an exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the American Stock Exchange.
S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC is a joint venture between S&P Global, the CME Group, and News Corp that was announced in 2011 and later launched in 2012. It produces, maintains, licenses, and markets stock market indices as benchmarks and as the basis of investable products, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, and structured products. The company currently has employees in 15 cities worldwide, including New York, London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Beijing, and Dubai.
A stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures a stock market, or a subset of the stock market, that helps investors compare current price levels with past prices to calculate market performance. It is computed from the prices of selected stocks.
The Thomson Reuters Equal Weight Commodity Index is a major US barometer of commodity prices. The index comprises 17 commodity futures that are continuously rebalanced: cocoa, coffee, copper, corn, cotton, crude oil, gold, heating oil, live cattle, live hogs, natural gas, orange juice, platinum, silver, soybeans, Sugar No. 11, and wheat.
The 2020 stock market crash is a global stock market crash that began on 20 February 2020. On 12 February, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ Composite, and S&P 500 Index all finished at record highs. From 24 to 28 February, stock markets worldwide reported their largest one-week declines since the 2008 financial crisis, thus entering a correction. Global markets into early March became extremely volatile, with large swings occurring in global markets. On 9 March, most global markets reported severe contractions, mainly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and an oil price war between Russia and the OPEC countries led by Saudi Arabia. This became colloquially known as Black Monday. At the time was the worst drop since the Great Recession in 2008.