AboutDr. Joseph de Beauchamp Expertise As an MBA professor, I publish on over 2000 public companies. I engage in conversations with them daily. I love to help people find good advice in this complex market.
Question What do you consider the top tech "bell-weather" stocks?
Thank you.......
Answer Bell-weather stocks are usually the Dow and here is the information on them.
Charles Dow first introduced the 12-stock industrial average in 1896. Today, the DJIA consists of 30 blue-chip U.S. stocks. Each one serves as a bellweather for a particular sector of the industry. Together, the Dow is a good measure of the overall performance of the U.S. stock market. Below is a list of the 30 Dow stocks, their stock symbols, weighted percentage, and the link to each of their Web sites and you can see that there are not many tech stocks here:
Company Name
Symbol
Weighted %
Alcoa Inc.
AA
3.138
Altria Group
MO
0.982
American Express Co.
AXP
6.510
American Int'l Group
AIG
2.498
Boeing Co.
BA
1.714
Caterpillar Inc.
CAT
1.877
Citigroup Inc.
C
2.553
Coca-Cola Co.
KO
2.330
DuPont Co.
DD
2.480
Exxon Mobil Corp.
XOM
3.809
General Electric Co.
GE
6.543
General Motors Corp.
GM
3.861
Home Depot Inc.
HD
2.804
Honeywell International Inc.
HON
2.250
Hewlett-Packard Co.
HWP
6.412
International Business Machines
IBM
5.218
Intel Corp.
INTC
5.885
J.P. Morgan Chase
JPM
5.766
Johnson & Johnson
JNJ
3.769
McDonald's Corp.
MCD
1.592
Merck & Co.
MRK
2.930
Microsoft Corp.
MSFT
4.672
Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing
MMM
4.042
Pfizer Inc. PFE 1.785
Procter & Gamble Co.
PG
2.866
SBC Communications Inc.
SBC
2.082
United Technologies Corp.
UTX
2.688
Verizon Communications VZ 2.700
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
WMT
2.517
Walt Disney Co.
DIS
1.711
More than one hundred years old, the Dow has a historical significance unlike any other stock index. It has become a cultural icon that students can use to do historical research of the stock market. As the U.S. has changed from an economy of farmers and industrialists to a society where services and technology dominate, the Dow components have also changed over time. Today, only one, General Electric, remains in the Dow under its original name.
