What's the yield of the Dow? Eh. It's a "market yield" because that's what the Dow, more or less is. But it's a synthesized, much smaller view of the market than, say, the S&P 500.
Why? The Dow comprises only 30 stocks. And those tend to be bigger, slower, higher dividend payers. So in an era when the S&P 500 might be paying 2.5% in dividend yield, the Dow might pay more like 3%.
Why does it matter? Well, there have been eras where dividends received more favorable tax treatment and/or dividends were perceived as comprising a very large part of the value in investing in equities. The world changed. Like it always does. And today, or at least in the modern era, investors believe in long-term growth or capital appreciation, and are less focused on the divvy.
Why? Well, in part, because companies didn't raise their dividends as fast as their stock prices grew, so the amount of dividend paid relative to stock prices remains at historic lows.
Our bet: the world will keep changing. Don't ignore your dividends.
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Finance: What is the Wilshire 5000?9 Views
finance a la shmoop what is the Wilshire 5000 well it's an index as in index fund
ticker W 5000 well the Wilshire 5000 had the top 5,000 most highly valued US [List of all the stocks in the Wilshire 5000]
stocks in it when it launched you know by the late 90s the index had added
another about 25 hundred names but it didn't change its name to Wilshire 7500 [Wilshire 7500 is crossed out and changed back to 5000]
and it changed names as companies split and spun off and as the internet IPO [Companies dividing into two]
boom forced a whole load of adds to the index there well then guess what a whole [Stocks flooding into the Wilshire 5000]
bunch of bankruptcies in the dot-com era came along you know along with mergers
and other financial dietary restrictions and they caused the size of the index to
fall to the you know 3,700 names zone where it sits today the Wilshire 5000 [Number of names in the index shrinking]
and yeah we don't know why then I'll just rename it the Wilshire 3,700 ish [Guy changing the sign as 3700ish appears and replaces the 5000]
either well its distinguished from say the S&P 500 in that it covers a much [The S&P 500 is moved away]
broader range of securities from mega cap companies like Apple all the way
down to companies with just a few hundred million bucks in market cap so [Examples of the smaller cap companies are highlighted]
when investors want to think about all stocks or at least the broadest swath of
them they think Wilshire and then a number but they think Wilshire anyway
and well we could give you roughly thirty seven hundred reasons why [Lady Gaga on stage]
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