What does it mean when you hear that a stock-market index, such as the Dow Jones for example, rises or falls? What does a single point on such an index represent?
A point drop basically mean the stocks of the company the dow jones consist of, overall together has lost $1 value all together. Dow jones is basically like a mutal fund that contains 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in the United States. A point drop mean that combined these 30 stock lost $1. A point drop on the market is equal to a $1 drop in price of what whatever your talking about, stock, mutual funds, bonds, indexes, whatever.