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A word for the Dow; Good food for less; The peril of retailer credit

A word for the Dow

The Dow Jones industrial average doesn’t deserve all the scorn it has recently reaped, said Matt Krantz in USA Today. “There’s no question there’s usually a dog or two in the Dow, but the measure itself is fairly reflective of the market.” With just 30 stocks, it has a much narrower base than the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, yet the two “move remarkably in tandem.” The difference is that when a stock in the Dow languishes, “it’s a more glaring problem since the measure has fewer members.” And because the Dow weights stocks on their per-share stock price, when a constituent’s stock falls, “so does its influence.” That helps to even out the Dow’s long-term performance, which over the last five years is much like the S&P’s: up 50 percent.

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