Some traditional manufacturers and a top retailer are being dumped from the Dow Jones industrial average as several high-tech stars are named to the world's best-known stock index.
Microsoft and Intel will be added to the 30 stocks that comprise the Dow Jones average as of November 1, editors of The Wall Street Journal announced. The Home Depot and SBC Communications are also joining the index.
Chevron.; Goodyear Tire & Rubber ; Sears, Roebuck ; and Union Carbide are being bumped to make way for the newcomers. The move "will make the Dow Jones industrial average even more representative of the evolving U.S. economy, as the average -- and the nation -- enter a new century," Journal Managing Editor Paul E. Steiger said in a statement.
This marks the first time that companies not listed on the New York Stock Exchange will be part of the index, as both Microsoft and Intel are traded on Nasdaq. The Dow Jones industrial average was created in 1896.