Is The Dow Jones Still Relevant?

New York Times:

One day in October 2006, my editor gave me the same assignment that hundreds of other editors were giving their business writers. He told me to go to a trading floor to witness the magical moment when the Dow Jones Industrial Average passed 12,000 points. He may have envisioned cheers, shouts, balloons, traders cutting one another’s ties and (this being 2006) dousing one another in Cristal. Instead, the traders obliviously entered orders into their computers while I stood around looking for the story.

It got me thinking: Why do we still care so much about the Dow?

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[VoiceofV]

11:26 PM on 02/08/2012

No: It was never a measure of anything other than how much gambling was going on in the Dow Jones casino.

[ConservativeChampion]

11:11 PM on 02/08/2012

The DOW is an OK measure but the S & P 500 is probably a better measure.

[BrendanP]

10:54 PM on 02/08/2012

You gotta be kidding you can't post comments like "without DJ the wealthy would have one less topic to discuss over martinis!"

[BrendanP]

10:51 PM on 02/08/2012

Without Dow Jones the wealthy would have one less thing to discuss over martinis!

[tnjr]

09:19 PM on 02/08/2012

It's a symbolic number now. The Dow used to be relevant. Originally, you had the DJ Industrials which represented factories and industries, they built thinhs. Then you have the DJ Transports which move the goods produced and finally the DJ Utilities, which powered the plants with electricity, water and such. The the DJI got changed as factories moved overseas or went out of business. These companie were replaced with companies like Disney and AmEx, which don't produce anything. So the DJI is not an "industrial" index anymore. Yet, it's only relevance is the historic number that is compared over the years.

[vetxcl]

09:03 PM on 02/08/2012

Anybody able to figure out that Newscorp, the owners of faux noise, also own the Dow, aside from myself???? That ownership says something. See if you can figure it out.

[gomezrules]

08:49 PM on 02/08/2012

Wall Street and the Dow are linked, at least to some degree. And to the question "is the Dow relevant?", it certainly is when a Dem President is in trouble. Obama routinely points to the Dow's 'performance' to take credit for it, and of course, who can ever forget the immortal mantra "It's Dow Jones, not Paula Jones" when then Juvenile-in-Chief Slick Willis got caught putting the cigar where cigars are not intended?

[uniquindividual]

07:18 PM on 02/08/2012

Not very relavant, too small a sample

[Longtimeliberal]

06:35 PM on 02/08/2012

I agree. When do we start focusing on the real economy instead of manufactured growth by the few at the top. Banks should lend to real business.

[nopilikia]

05:42 PM on 02/08/2012

Not really......better gage would be the S&P 500.