DJIA- Food For Thought.

Barron's {The weekly stock magazine published by Dow Jones*} highlighted this weekend the stocks that hurt and helped the Dow Jones Industrial Average {the Dow}as it has made its roundtrip from the high's it last garned in 2000. I have included a monthly chart of the Dow. You can click on it to enlarge it.

First what Barron's didn't say in the article. Which is that from its absolute high in 2000 to its absolute low in 2002, the Dow lost almost 40% of its value. Also it has not yet recovered that absolute high last seen in January of 2000.

Now to what they discussed.

-3 names are different from the 2000 list.
-Only 9 current members of the Dow are higher than where they were back then. Among this list are the heaviest of industrial names: Boeing (BA), United Technologies (UTX), 3M (MMM), and Caterpillar (CAT) where the biggest winners up 20% or more. All are heavy industrial names.
-The growth components of this index the Microsoft's (MSFT)& Intel's (INTC)and Home Depot's (HD) have significantly underperformed during this time.

This is likely the exact opposite of what most investors would have thought would have occurred during this time.

Here is a yahoo link for those interested in what makes up the current Dow components. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cp?s=^dji


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*Barron's Magazine April 24, 2006. Page M-6