“Despite the better performance Wednesday, the industrial conglomerate has proven a bane for investors in the past several years, recently slashing its dividend and tempering profit expectations,” according to CNBC. “The stock is down 55 percent over the past 10 years, including a 46 percent decline in just the past 12 months.”
The Dow is composed of the 30 largest companies in the U.S. across a number of sectors. Holdings are selected by the editors of the Wall Street Journal.
Since the index follows price-weighted methodology, components with higher prices will have a larger impact on the daily movements in the Dow, which has drawn some criticism over its somewhat arbitrary weighting method. Daily changes in the Dow are calculated by adding prices of the 30 Dow stocks and then divided by the “Dow Divisor.”
The First Trust Dow 30 ETF (NYSEARCA: EDOW), which debuted in August, attempts to equally weight the 30 Dow stocks, but GE is the smallest member of that ETF’s lineup at 2.85%.
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