Stock Market Glossary letter D

Day TradingDay Trading is the practice of buying and selling any of a variety of securities and closing all positions by the end of the trading day. Day traders can and do trade stocks, equity and commodity options and futures, and foreign currencies. Once strictly the province of investment bankers, day trading is growing in popularity among people who are not financial professionals. The growth of the Internet, expanded online communication speeds and the availability of personal day trading programs has brought day trading from Wall Street to Main Street.

Dividends – Dividends are one way that profitable companies reward their investors. Typically issued quarterly, dividends may take the form of cash payments or shares of stock. It is the company directors who decide the particulars of issuing dividends, not the stock owners. Not all companies issue dividends when they declare a profit, some preferring to reinvest all of the available profits into the company.

Dow Jones Industrial Average – The Dow Jones Industrial Average, often simply referred to as “the Dow” and abbreviated to DJIA, is a creation of Charles Dow, a former editor Wall Street Journal and the founder of Dow Jones & Company. In 1896, Dow came up with the idea of combining the values of 30 selected stocks to form an ongoing measure of America’s industrial performance. Over the years, companies have been added and removed from the DJIA based on their own performance. It is a point of pride and privilege for a company to be included in the DJIA.

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