Investment Essentials: Status of the Market

We know what the market is and we know that stocks are sold there but how does one actually gauge how the market is doing? And what are points? Aren't we trading dollars? 

These are common questions for new investors. Just like anything else, there is a score kept on Wall Street. One just needs to know where to find it. For Wall Street, the easiest way to find your gauge of how the market is doing is to look towards the Dow Jones Industrial Average - often referred by the acronym DJIA. Or, if you don't like the DJIA, you can look towards the S&P 500 (which is what I like to use instead). The DJIA includes some of the most well known companies in the United States. There are 30 companies in the DJIA all together. It is a collection of these stocks that are brought together to tell investors how the market is doing on any given day as it is supposedly seen as an average.