ABSTRACT
Charles H. Dow is believed to have been the first to make a thorough effort to express the general trend of the securities market in terms of the average price of a selected few representative stocks. There is much in the writings of its original promulgator, Charles H. Dow, to suggest he did not think of his theory as a device for forecasting the stock market, or even as a guide for investors, but rather as a barometer of general business trends. Dow founded the Dow–Jones Financial News Service and is credited with the invention of stock market averages. The stocks included in these two Averages have been changed from time to time to keep the lists up to date and as nearly representative as possible of their respective groups. The comparison with tide, wave, and ripple has been used since the earliest days of the Dow Theory.
