When I last wrote about the Dow Jones Industrial Average, less than two months ago, my question was, “What’s Going On With the Dow?“ Here’s what the chart looked like over the previous twelve months. The purple is the NASDAQ; The blue is the S&P 500; and the Dow 30 is the red line. Not a pretty sight!

Here’s what these three indices have looked like so far in this quarter. Note that October was abysmal for the first 27 days. Seven out of eight consecutive days were negative. I really don’t enjoy those periods! 

And then the sun came out. Since then, we have only experienced eight down days in the Dow! The Dow has actually kept pace with the other two major indices and is ahead of the S&P 500. The Dow has gone from 32,417.59 on October 27^th to 37,208.32 a few moments ago. That’s a 14.78% increase in 33 trading days. With two weeks to go, this may end up being a pretty good year, in spite of how things looked in October!

In the chart I provided with the quarterly report, only eleven of the thirty Dow stocks were positive. Most of those were involved in the Technology sector. Here is a chart of performance for the Dow stocks this quarter. Only six of the thirty stocks have been negative for this quarter. 

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a stable next two weeks!

Rick Adkins, CFP®, ChFC, MBA

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