Eight Dow Stocks at New Highs, from Steve Ellison
It is possible if the stocks making new highs have made big gains. To see why, imagine an equally-weighted index with just two stocks, X and Y. Both start at 100, with the index also at 100. Then both rise to 135, as does the index. Then a nasty correction occurs, knocking both their prices and the index back to 100. Then X's sector falls out of favor, and X struggles to rally back to 108. During the same time, Y's price rises to 200. The result is that the index reaches a new high of 154, even though one of its stocks is 20% off its high.
For the record, 15 of the 30 Dow stocks are up at least 10% over the past year and are within 5% of their 52-week highs
One wonders how 22 stocks of the Dow can be well below their highs, 8 at new highs, and yet the Dow Index is at an all time high. How is this possible?
52-week 52-week % from 52-week
Year ago High Low Today high change
HON 43.13 55.04 35.53 54.89 -0.3% 27.3%
KO 42.05 52.23 41.61 52.06 -0.3% 23.8%
IBM 83.88 101.70 72.73 101.17 -0.5% 20.6%
XOM 62.42 80.86 56.64 80.36 -0.6% 28.7%
JPM 43.95 53.00 39.33 52.55 -0.8% 19.6%
AXP 53.70 62.74 49.73 62.14 -1.0% 15.7%
MRK 34.60 52.63 32.75 51.86 -1.5% 49.9%
MCD 34.62 49.70 31.73 48.95 -1.5% 41.4%
BA 84.10 95.58 72.13 94.02 -1.6% 11.8%