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https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-dows-2014-gain-is-kind-of-meh-2014-12-31?siteid=YAHOOB
?uuid=ff562574-913e-11e4-82f0-5e49c916e7ef
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 7.5% in 2014, a showing that’s actually just “meh.”
The blue-chip gauge’s average yearly move in the last couple of decades is a 9.7% jump, according to FactSet data going back to 1988. And that includes the brutal 33.8% slide of 2008, as the financial crisis and recession took hold. Since then, however, the Dow has barely looked back, more than doubling as it has posted six straight years of gains.
The S&P 500’s climb of 11.4% in 2014, in contrast, ought to impress investors. The big-cap benchmark’s average annual move since 1988 is a gain of 9.7% — just like the Dow’s. So it delivered an above-average year in 2014. The S&P has risen for three years in a row, after edging down for the year in 2011 as investors fretted about — sound familiar? — eurozone problems.
The Dow underperformed the S&P this year, as it has in other bull-market years, in part because it tracks 30 mature, not-so-high-growth companies. It is the index, after all, that’s been called a dinosaur, or worse. On the flip side, the old-school, steadier Dow showed its resilience in 2011, when it rose 5.5%.
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?uuid=ff562574-913e-11e4-82f0-5e49c916e7ef
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 7.5% in 2014, a showing that’s actually just “meh.”
The blue-chip gauge’s average yearly move in the last couple of decades is a 9.7% jump, according to FactSet data going back to 1988. And that includes the brutal 33.8% slide of 2008, as the financial crisis and recession took hold. Since then, however, the Dow has barely looked back, more than doubling as it has posted six straight years of gains.
The S&P 500’s climb of 11.4% in 2014, in contrast, ought to impress investors. The big-cap benchmark’s average annual move since 1988 is a gain of 9.7% — just like the Dow’s. So it delivered an above-average year in 2014. The S&P has risen for three years in a row, after edging down for the year in 2011 as investors fretted about — sound familiar? — eurozone problems.
The Dow underperformed the S&P this year, as it has in other bull-market years, in part because it tracks 30 mature, not-so-high-growth companies. It is the index, after all, that’s been called a dinosaur, or worse. On the flip side, the old-school, steadier Dow showed its resilience in 2011, when it rose 5.5%.
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