The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is a stock market index that tracks the performance of 30 large, well-known companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. These companies represent a range of industries, making the DJIA a popular way to gauge how the overall stock market and economy are doing. While it doesn’t include every type of business, the companies in the index are seen as leaders in their fields, so their performance often reflects broader market trends. The DJIA is one of the oldest and most widely followed indexes in the world, and its daily changes are often reported in the news to show whether the market is generally going up or down.