What is the dowl industrial average?

Answer 1

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index comprised of 30 large, publicly traded companies based in the U.S. The DJIA is a price-weighted average which gives more influence to higher priced stocks, making it a questionable indicator of market performance compared to the broader, market-value weighted indices such as the S&P 500 and Wilshire 5000.

Answer 2

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is one of the oldest and most quoted Stock Market indices. When the market has a big up or down day the mainstream media is most likely to report on how the Dow Jones did despite the fact that there are numerous other stock market indices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was created in 1896 and consists of 30 large public companies representative of the United States economy. The term "industrial average" is somewhat of a misnomer since the Dow Jones includes companies across the entire spectrum of the U.S. economy including retail, finance, banking, aerospace, pharmaceutical, computers, insurance, food, beverages, health care, and entertainment.
In order to reflect a growing and dynamic U.S. economy, the components of the Dow are changed to reflect the birth and death of major new industries. For example, General Electric has been in the Dow Jones Average since 1907 but Microsoft wasn't added until 1999. Since its inception there have been over 50 additions to the Dow to replace companies that failed, merged, or were no longer considered representative of the modern American economy.
The latest addition to the Dow Jones occurred on March 19, 2015 when Apple replaced AT&T.
Since the Dow Jones is widely followed, different strategies have been devised in order to try and beat the overall market using Dow stocks. One such strategy is called the Dogs of the Dow which relies on investing in the Dow stocks with the highest dividends.