I never took statistics -- hence a BA instead of a BS in my chosen field -- but it seems the Dow's small sample size doesn't justify its position as The Measure of . . . anything. Yet it's the one most often pointed to with, "See how good (bad) the markets are doing!" It also has bigger numbers, that's supposed to be impressive, I guess.
But if you look at the 30 companies listed on the Dow, very few of them have much to do with any kind of "industrial" manufacturing, and many don't manufacture anything at all. Quite a few seem to be little more than vehicles for transferring/extracting wealth -- American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Visa, Goldman Sachs, UnitedHealth Group, etc. -- from the actual economy via financial services/manipulation.
On the other hand, what do I know? I'm just here to toss out ideas and see what happens. Usually . . . . . . . nothing. 
Edit history
Recommendations
0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):
= new reply since forum marked as read