The Dow Jones Industrials Average, the US’s second-oldest stock market index, made history last week topping 50,000 for the first time. The index is made up of 30 stocks, mostly in the financial, consumer and industrial sectors.
‘Old Economy’
The Dow is something of an oddity as far as most investors are concerned. Instead of whizzy tech stocks, it is heavily weighted to large-cap household names which are often considered ‘old economy’.
First calculated in 1896, the Dow Industrials is the second-oldest US index after the Dow Transports. The index is owned and maintained today by S&P Dow Jones Indices, part of S&P Global (SPGI).
Another reason the index is considered an oddity is the way it is calculated. Instead of being market-cap weighted, like the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq, it is price-weighted.
In other words, the higher the price of the stock, the bigger its weight in the index. Therefore, a $1 move in a $100 share has a bigger impact than a $1 move in a $10 share.
So, while Nvidia (NVDA) is the largest stock in the S&P 500, it is only the 20th stock in the Dow. Instead of a 7.1% weight, it only has a 2.27% weight, because it has a relatively low share price.
Instead, Goldman Sachs (GS) – which only has a weight of 0.41% in the S&P – is the biggest Dow stock. Thanks to its $925 share price, it has a weighting of more than 11% in the index.
Importantly, if a stock has a split, its weighting gets reduced in the index according to the new share price. Conversely, if a company keeps buying back shares and its stock price goes up, so does its weighting.
Dow Jones Industrial components as of Feb 2026
| Stock | Weight (%) | Price 6 Feb 2026 ($) |
| Goldman Sachs | 11.39 | 925.50 |
| Caterpillar | 8.89 | 722.48 |
| Microsoft | 4.98 | 404.50 |
| Home Depot | 4.73 | 384.49 |
| Amgen | 4.72 | 383.73 |
| Sherwin-Williams | 4.49 | 364.76 |
| American Express | 4.42 | 359.13 |
| Visa | 4.08 | 331.64 |
| McDonald’s | 4.02 | 32.50 |
| JPMorgan Chase | 3.95 | 321.00 |
| Travelers | 3.68 | 299.21 |
| IBM | 3.65 | 296.60 |
| Apple | 3.42 | 277.92 |
| UnitedHealth | 3.39 | 275.44 |
| Boeing | 2.99 | 242.80 |
| Johnson & Johnson | 2.95 | 239.88 |
| Honeywell | 2.94 | 238.70 |
| Amazon.com | 2.57 | 209.13 |
| Salesforce | 2.35 | 190.62 |
| Nvidia | 2.27 | 184.05 |
| Chevron | 2.23 | 180.93 |
| 3M | 2.11 | 171.00 |
| Procter & Gamble | 1.95 | 158.67 |
| Walmart | 1.61 | 130.74 |
| Merck | 1.50 | 121.55 |
| Walt Disney | 1.33 | 108.39 |
| Cisco Systems | 1.04 | 84.47 |
| Coca-Cola | 0.97 | 78.78 |
| Nike | 0.78 | 65.73 |
| Verizon | 0.57 | 46.20 |
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices
