The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 44000 for the first time on record Monday. The index added around 304 points, or 0.69%, to 44293.13. The climb from 43000—hit 20 trading days ago—was led by Goldman Sachs,

Most indexes, like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, assign a higher weighting to the largest companies by market cap. For example, Apple has roughly 11 times the market cap of Coca-Cola, so it has a much higher weighting in the S&P 500. But in the Dow, Apple is the 12th highest-weighted company by market cap because the index is price-weighted.

Short-term bearish investors can profit from declines in the Dow Jones with ProShares Short Dow30 ETF (DOG), but it's not ideal for long-term investment.

When the Dow Jones was officially incepted on May 26, 1896, it was comprised of a dozen companies, most of which were tied to the industrial sector. Today, it contains an assortment of 30 historically profitable, time-tested, industry-leading businesses.

For Nvidia (NVDA) , this has been the best of years. The company, led by Jensen Huang, makes the graphic processing chips that are the foundation of artificial intelligence, and everyone wants a piece of the company.