While watching - as I do every morning - CNBC... and seeing that the market is DOWN 82 points... I wonder how my Schwab account is doing. I use this account because it's the newest (as far as newest purchases of shares) so has the highest average cost etc. AH HA! It is UP.... so what the heck - the DOW is down and I'm up, what's with that?
I say this - to stir what YOU might be thinking when you see something similar in your accounts. True - I'm well invested and diversified - while - if you 're just starting out you might not be (YET)... but it got me to thinking that many "newbs" (new to the stock market) might not really know what the Dow and the S&P are, and or, more importantly, how they (DJIA) get their numbers.
Many people don't realize that the stocks are "price weighted" within the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average)... i.e., that their stock price move is multiplied and is based on the stocks price. The higher the price - the more "important" it is and carries more weight within the average. So a 1 point move in IBM might be a 8 point move in the DOW!!
So - just using these numbers as an EXAMPLE (they're not real numbers) - IBM is weighted in the DOW and makes up 6.9% of the average... 3M makes up 7.2% of the average - while CAT makes up only 3.5%. You can see then that a move in CAT won't have nearly as much influence as a move in 3M.
So what happens is IBM might blow it's quarterly number (or might make a really nice quarter - so either way) and the DOW blows up... but on further inspection it's really IBM that is the big mover of the DOW.
The DOW is made up of the 30 largest companies - as calculated by their MARKET VALUE.. so share price X's the number of shares issued. And is heavily weighted with INDUSTRIAL companies... it's light on "tech" and many other segments of the market. It IS NOT an actual mirror on the market and your individual performance. Thus the reason for my post today.
For the last 7 of 8 days the market (the DOW) has been down... while my Schwab account has had an amazing run UP...
I like my average better than theirs!