How Relevant Is The Dow Jones Industrial Average Reaching 14,000?

by: Chad Brand posted on: July 17, 2007 | about stocks: DIA / IYY / SPY

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The move from Dow 12,000 to Dow 14,000 has been pretty stunning. How relevant is that index, though? We can argue that it is heavily weighted towards mega cap stocks, and that is true, but so is the S&P 500 since it is market cap weighted. Some of you may not be aware of this, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average is not market cap weighted. Instead, it is share price weighted.

This serves to make its moves pretty much irrelevant in terms of gaging the market's overall health. A one dollar move in Boeing (BA) has the same effect as a one dollar move in Microsoft (MSFT), even though Boeing trades over $100 per share and MSFT shares sell for $30 each.

What is the end result of this pricing method for the Dow? Boeing has more than three times as much influence as Microsoft does, and the same pattern holds for any other Dow component. In fact, materials and industrials account for a whopping 35% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average due to their high share prices (which may not be shocking given the name of the index).

Those two groups have been leading the market higher, so it is not surprising that the Dow has been soaring. On the other hand, financial services firms have been lagging this year, but they only account for 14% of the Dow, more than 30% less than their weight in the S&P 500. Dow 14,000 is a nice round number, but it really doesn't tell us a lot about the market as a whole, only certain sectors that dominate its composition.

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