Dow Jones

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is the oldest and most widely cited US stock index, tracking 30 large, publicly traded companies chosen by the editors of The Wall Street Journal. Created in 1896 by Charles Dow and Edward Jones, it is a price-weighted index and includes companies such as Goldman Sachs, Apple, Boeing, McDonald's and Microsoft.

Goldman Sachs is one of the world's most prominent investment banks, offering services in investment banking, securities trading, asset management and consumer banking. Founded in 1869 by Marcus Goldman in New York, it advises on the largest mergers, acquisitions and IPOs globally. Its Marcus retail banking brand, launched in 2016, targets retail savings and personal loans.

IBM (International Business Machines) is an American technology company with over a century of history, founded in 1911. Having pivoted from mainframes and PCs to hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence, its main business lines today are hybrid cloud (powered by the Red Hat acquisition) and AI consulting services. IBM's Watson AI platform is used across industries for automation, analytics and natural language processing.

McDonald's is the world's largest fast-food chain, serving around 69 million customers a day across over 40,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1940 in San Bernardino, California and franchised from 1954 by Ray Kroc, nearly 95 percent of McDonald's restaurants are operated by independent franchisees. Its menu centres on burgers, fries, chicken and breakfast, with significant regional variations.

The Travelers Companies is a major US property and casualty insurance group headquartered in New York. It is one of the country's largest writers of homeowners insurance and ranks among the top providers of personal and commercial lines. Travelers is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Verizon Communications is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the United States, providing wireless services to over 120 million subscribers and broadband and media services through Fios. Formed in 2000 from the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, it has invested heavily in 5G network deployment. Its media assets — including Yahoo and AOL — were sold to Apollo Global Management in 2021.