DJIA Vs NASDAQ

What is the ‘market’ that business people and investors are so concerned of? And what are the terms DJIA and NASDAQ doing in this scenario? Well, to avoid the wrong understanding of both, these two are actually the indexes that people watch out for. As indexes, they serve as a statistical measure of how the market and its stocks are performing.

DJIA, completely known as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is a very essential market index that fuels almost all news agencies everyday. Comfortably known as the Dow index, DJIA analyzes 30 different high performing companies in which all stock movements are meticulously being measured. Almost all of these companies are found in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), which is regarded as the largest equity exchange in the world based in ‘the Big Apple – NYC.’ It only has two stocks that are also counted under NASDAQ.

Like the DJIA, NASDAQ or National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation also serves to present some numerical values of the statistics of a part of a certain market of stocks. But unlike Dow, it monitors up to 4,000 different stocks undergoing extensive trade in the stock exchanges.

It is also important to take note that people can buy and sell stocks only in NASDAQ and not in DJIA. However, business people cannot simply make a trade of indexes in either DJIA or NASDAQ because both are mere representations of averages of ‘the market.’ You can alternatively buy some index funds and securities if you want to.

In terms of age, DJIA is the older index. It existed as early as 1896 and was developed by Charles Dow. As an early starter, everything was not done electronically because there were no computers during its inception. NASDAQ, on the contrary, is the newer index that was invented in 1971 although it reserves its crown as the pioneer in electronic stock exchanges.

DJIA in itself is also heralded as the most viewed index worldwide. Usually, when you hear a comment from the news claiming that the market is ‘down’ for the day it is almost always referring to the DJIA index. GE, Walt Disney and Microsoft are among the biggest companies listed under this index. NASDAQ stocks are usually those that belong to tech and electronics like Microsoft (also in DJIA) & Dell. It is also said that is has the largest trading of securities and equities in terms of hourly trading volume globally.

Summary:
1.DJIA lists 30 companies while NASDAQ covers more or less 4,000 different stocks worldwide.
2.DJIA is an older index than NASDAQ
3.NASDAQ has a larger equity-security trading per hour than any other index and that includes DJIA.