Dow Jones Launches Economic Stimulus Index
According to the announcement, the index measures
the performance of leading U.S. companies drawn from
industries that are expected to receive stimulus dollars
from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Dow Jones Indexes mapped the key areas targeted by the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to six core
categories: Alternative Energy, Construction &
Materials, Energy Grid, Environment, Technology,
Telecom/Internet.
To be eligible for inclusion, a company must be a
component of the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index,
must have a three-month minimum average daily trading
volume of $5 million, and must be categorized in one of
the six categories determined by Dow Jones Indexes, the
announcement said. Within each of the six categories,
stocks are selected top-down based on float-adjusted
market capitalization until the target component count
per category is achieved.
The number of components is determined based on the
percentage of stimulus dollars allocated to each
category. Of the 50 index components 20 are derived from
the category Construction & Materials, 10 components
from Alternative Energy, and five components from each of
the remaining categories.
The top five index components by free-float market
capitalization are Microsoft Corp. (category:
Technology), AT&T Inc. (category: Telecom/Internet),
General Electric Co. (category: Alternative Energy),
International Business Machines Corp. (category:
Technology), and Cisco Systems Inc. (category:
Telecom/Internet).
As of May 26, 2009, the Dow Jones U.S. Economic Stimulus
Index is up 1.62% since its inception on December 31,
2008.