How Are the Dow Components Doing This Year?

June 30, 2008

The Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA)
is the most widely followed index, holding our 30 most dear and near
corporations - the names everyone knows. It actually has a very
convoluted methodology which gives weight to the stocks within the
indix by price instead of market capitalization, like most indexes.
Hence the higher the stock price (which is quite an arbitrary thing,
since if a stock splits 2:1 it should not matter to its “importance” in
an index) the more it affects the DJIA. If you are interested in the
morbid details (you engineering types) you can read here. Essentially most of us who are around a while use more broad indexes such as the S&P 500, or Russell 2000.

More interesting to look at is how they are doing for the year, courtesy of BeSpoke Blog. Let’s couch it this way - thank god for Walmart (WMT). Even the large oil integrated stocks (which I don’t like) are not really helping much.
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