If you watch the news, you hear at all the time about the Dow Jones 【S1】______Industrial A

If you watch the news, you hear at all the time about the Dow Jones 【S1】______

Industrial Average and other averages that like the S＆P 500 or the 【S2】______

Russel 2000. These are "market averages" designed to tell you how

companies are traded on the stock market are doing in general. 【S3】______

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is simply the average value of 30

large, and industrial stocks. Big companies like General Motors, 【S4】______

Goodyear, IBM and Exxon are the kinds of companies that make up

this index. See this page for details on how that the average is 【S5】______

calculated. See this page for a list of the companies in the average.

The thing to understand is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is

nothing magic--which someone has chosen 30 companies and 【S6】______

he averaged their values together by following a specific formula. 【S7】______

That's all what it is. 【S8】______

There are all sorts of averages out there. The S＆P 500 is the average

value of 500 different large companies. But the Russel 2000 tracks 【S9】______

the average of 2,000 smaller companies. And there are others.

What these averages tell you is the general health of stock prices as 【S10】______

a whole. If the economy is "doing well", then the prices of stocks as a 【S11】______

group tend to rise. If it is "doing poorly", prices as a group tend to fall.

The averages show you these tendencies in the market as a whole. If

a specific stock is going down but while the market as a whole is going 【S12】______

up, that tells you something. Or if a stock is rising, but is rising faster

or slower than the market as a whole, that tells you something as well.

【S1】______