The stock market is a fickle beast. One day you're hitting record highs, and the next, you’re watching hundreds of points evaporate before your morning coffee even gets cold. If you are checking what is the dow jones average right now, the number on your screen is likely 49,191.99.
That is a drop of 398.21 points today, Tuesday, January 13, 2026.
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Essentially, the Dow took a 0.8% haircut. While that might feel like a gut punch if you’ve been riding the "road to 50k" hype train, it’s actually a pretty logical reaction to the chaos currently swirling around Wall Street.
The Fed, Inflation, and Why Everyone is Nervous
Honestly, the biggest story today isn't just the number. It's why the number is moving. We just got the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, and it was... okay? Core inflation landed at 2.6%, which was actually a tiny bit cooler than the 2.7% the "smartest guys in the room" expected.
You'd think the market would cheer for lower inflation. Usually, it does. But right now, investors are obsessing over when the Federal Reserve is going to finally cut interest rates.
A January rate cut? Forget about it. Not happening. But March? Well, March is suddenly looking like a possibility. The problem is that the market had already "priced in" a lot of this good news. When the news actually arrived, there was no "oomph" left to push prices higher.
Earnings Season: The Good, The Bad, and The Delta
We are also officially in the thick of Q4 earnings season. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) basically kicked things off, and it was a mixed bag. Their profits actually dropped to $13 billion from $14 billion a year ago. A big reason for that was a one-time charge they had to take because they're taking over Apple's credit card portfolio.
JPM stock managed to eke out a 0.2% gain, but other companies weren't so lucky.
Delta Air Lines got absolutely hammered. They dropped 5% today. Why? Because even though they beat earnings expectations, their revenue was a miss and their 2026 guidance was, frankly, disappointing. When a major industrial player like Delta tells the world that the rest of the year looks "meh," the Dow—which is heavily weighted toward these types of blue-chip giants—tends to catch a cold.
The Weird Political Drama Impacting Your Wallet
There is some really strange stuff happening in D.C. right now that is spooking the markets. Over the weekend, the Department of Justice actually subpoenaed the Federal Reserve. They’re looking into criminal indictments regarding Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony about—get this—renovations at the Fed headquarters.
It sounds like a minor bureaucratic spat, but investors hate it.
When the White House and the Fed are at each other's throats, it creates "monetary policy instability." Basically, people start worrying that the Fed won't be able to do its job of controlling inflation without political interference. This kind of drama usually sends people running toward "safe" assets like gold, which, unsurprisingly, moved higher today while the Dow fell.
What’s Actually Moving the Needle?
The Dow is a "price-weighted" index. This is a fancy way of saying that stocks with higher share prices have more power over the average than stocks with lower prices.
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- Goldman Sachs: This is the big kahuna. It makes up nearly 12% of the entire Dow. When Goldman moves, the Dow moves.
- The "One Big Beautiful Act": This new tax policy is supposed to cut corporate tax bills by billions through 2026 and 2027. It's the main reason we even got close to 50,000 in the first place.
- Tariffs: President Trump’s trade policies are still the ultimate wild card. We just saw a "tariff pause" on furniture, which helped retail stocks, but the average effective tariff rate on imports is still sitting near 12%. That’s a massive jump from the 2% we saw at the start of 2025.
Is the Bull Market Dead?
Probably not. Most analysts, including those at Deutsche Bank and Yardeni Research, are still calling for the Dow to hit 52,000 or even 54,000 by the end of the year.
Technically speaking, the Dow is still in a "rising channel." As long as it stays above the 48,760 support level (which was the December high), the long-term trend is still pointing up. Today’s 400-point drop is what traders call a "minor corrective decline."
It's healthy, sort of. Markets can't just go up in a straight line forever without eventually exploding.
Actionable Steps for Your Portfolio
If you're staring at the dow jones average right now and feeling a bit of panic, here is how you should actually handle it:
- Check your Financials exposure. Since banks like Goldman and JPM make up about 28% of the Dow, your portfolio is likely very sensitive to interest rate news. If you’re too heavy here, today was a reminder of why diversification matters.
- Watch the 49,000 level. This is the "psychological floor." If the Dow closes significantly below 49k this week, we might be looking at a deeper slide toward 47,850.
- Don't ignore the "K-shaped" economy. Big tech and AI-heavy stocks (like Nvidia and Microsoft) are still doing their own thing, while industrials and retailers are struggling with tariff costs. Make sure you aren't just betting on one side of that divide.
- Keep an eye on the Supreme Court. There is a pending decision on whether the President has the power to impose tariffs without Congress. That ruling, expected early this year, will move the Dow more than any earnings report ever could.
The market is currently in a "wait and see" mode. We’ve had a massive run-up, and now everyone is just trying to figure out if the economy is actually strong enough to support these prices. Stay patient. 49,191.99 isn't the end of the world; it's just a Tuesday on Wall Street.