The Dow ended yesterday’s session practically knocking down the door of its first record since early December. Today it was bumped from the front porch.
The blue-chip index was off 165 points, or 0.4%, on Thursday despite 17 of its 30 stocks posting daily gains. The S&P 500—which only had half of its stocks rising—was up 0.2%. The Nasdaq Composite was up 0.3%.
It all comes down to what’s in the Dow and what isn’t—as well as how it weighs its members. The Dow only includes 30 stocks, and none of them are today’s Big Tech earnings winner, Alphabet. Nvidia is in the Dow, but its $173 stock price gives it less pull because the Dow weighs members by stock price rather than market cap.
That’s where today’s issue lies: the Dow’s biggest losers include International Business Machines, Honeywell International, and UnitedHealth. Combined, those three stocks shaved 268 points off the index.
If all three were flat, the Dow would finally join the S&P and Nasdaq with record closes today.
