What Helped the Dow Index Is Now Hurting It.
It's the granddaddy of stock indexes, a centenarian that is spritely for its age. Since a near fatal fall in March 2009, it's nearly doubled.
But the Dow Jones industrial average is starting to look frail.
The problem is that the blue-chip index has been relying heavily on just two of its 30 stocks, Caterpillar and IBM. Those companies were responsible for a fifth of the near-doubling in the index. But since it hit a 2012 high on May 1, the Dow has slipped, and the software company and the heavy equipment maker have accounted for half of that decline.
"When you have a couple of very high-priced stocks, they're going to skew things," says Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, a research firm. For Caterpillar especially, he adds, "economic strength" outside the U.S. has helped
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/07/22/business/ap-us-wall-street-week-ahead.html?_r=1&hp
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