The Dow Jones Industrial Average or the DJIA is, so far, the most widely used financial barometer in the world. It is used more like a representation of all financial markets in general. When people talk about market going up or down, the maximum possibility is that they are referring to Dow Jones live. Let us see what Dow Jones is all about. In 1885, a person by the name of Charles Dow devised his first stock index that was made up of two capitalized industrial and 12 capitalized railroad companies. Charles developed this index and another few later to track the economy of his country which was U.S. He figured put the companies that were considered to be the backbone of the U.S. economy at that time. In 1886, he altered his index to contain 10 railroads and two industrials. In the mid-1890s, Dow recognized the growing importance of the industrial sector in the U.S. economy and again altered his index, this time to consist solely of industrial stocks. And finally, the first version of the DJIA, which contained 12 stocks, appeared in The Wall Street Journal on May 26, 1896. Then came the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1929. And from then till now, there have been many changes in the stocks but one company that maintained its position in the list is General Electric. There are still other two Dow averages, the Dow Jones Utility Average, DJUA, and the Dow Jones Transportation Average, DJTA. To know more about Dow Jones or Dow Jones live, one can go on selected sites like www.niftydowjones.com. This site provides detailed information on all the latest happenings on the Dow Jones index. It features live trading charts of gold, silver, copper, natural gas, brent and crude oil. This site of Nifty Dow Jones also has online margin and profit calculators.