The Great Minds of the Market: Charles Dow by Alexander Green
This week I’m beginning a series about the great men and women – often unknown – who shaped the modern investment landscape.
Why should you care about these individuals, especially since many of them are dead? Because Sir Francis Bacon was right: Knowledge is power. This is especially true in the financial markets.
And, as you’re about to learn, the type of knowledge you accumulate is likely to be a primary determinant of your success as an investor.
So let’s kick things off today with a man whose name is legendary on Wall Street:
Charles Dow.
Dow is a significant figure in the annals of financial history for two reasons. He created the first financial bible, The Wall Street Journal, and the first market barometer, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In doing so, he revolutionized the way we talk about the financial markets.
(By the way, Charles Dow is sometimes credited with creating Dow Theory, too. This is not so. The market-timing strategy was extracted fom his WSJ editorials 20 years after his death by a market technician named William P. Hamilton.)