The market has a great 4-year ride
The Dow finishes is up 121% from its March 2009 low after rising 50 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq have had even better performances.
Maybe you think the rally is phony; purely a function of the Federal Reserve's wacky bid to boost the economy. That's fine. Sell your stocks.
Maybe you think the rally has legs, that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is the only adult in Washington. That's fine, too. Hold onto your positions. You may even want to add to them. That's fine, too, but be mindful of the adage that markets revert to the mean.
The Dow is up nearly 121% since the 2009 lows. It has risen for seven straight days, including a 50-point rise to 14,447 on Monday. It has set new closing highs for five straight days.
The S&P 500 is up more nearly 130% and has also seen seven gains in a row. With a 5-point gain on Monday to 1,556, it's less than 9 points below it's closing high.
The Nasdaq is up a whopping 156% to 3,253 and is trading at 52-week highs.
It has finished in the black for six of seven days. But it is still 35.6% below its 2000 peak, set on March 10, 2000. It was the height of the dot-com bubble, and the index would fall pretty steadily for the next two-and-a-half years.
What's amazing about the big rally is how few losers there are over the last four years: just 14 S&P 500 stocks. Here are the top 10 winners and losers for the index since 2009.
Meanwhile, only one Dow stock, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), is lower than its close on March 9, 2009.
The leader is American Express (AXP), up 508.1% on Friday, followed by Home Depot (HD) and Caterpillar (CAT).
| S&P 500 winners and losers since 2009 low | |||
| Winners | Chg. | ||
| Wyndham | 1949.7% | ||
| CBS B | 1388.7% | ||
| Tenet Healthcare | 1100.0% | ||
| Fifth Third Bancorp | 1075.5% | ||
| Gannett | 1007.2% | ||
| Genworth Financial | 981.3% | ||
| International Paper | 963.2% | ||
| Pioneer Natural Resources | 954.9% | ||
| Seagate Technology | 935.0% | ||
| Expedia | 912.8% | ||
| Laggards | Chg. | ||
| Best Buy | -18.4% | ||
| Pitney Bowes | -21.4% | ||
| People's United Financial | -23.0% | ||
| Frontier Communications | -24.5% | ||
| Abbott Laboratories | -25.7% | ||
| MetroPCS Communications | -25.8% | ||
| Exelon | -26.7% | ||
| SAIC | -28.2% | ||
| Apollo Group | -74.4% | ||
| First Solar | -75.7% | ||
| Data as of March 8 | |||
For those wondering, Apple (AAPL) is up better than 400%. Google (GOOG) is up more than 170% and Amazon.com (AMZN) is up 340%.
Crude oil (-CL) in New York closed at $47.07 a barrel on March 9, 2009. It's up 95.6% since. Gold (-GC) is up 71.8% since the March 2009 bottom. The 10-year Treasury yield finished at 2.89% on March 9, 2009. It's at 2.056% now.
Here are the top 10 and bottom 10 Dow performers since March 9, 2009.
| Dow winners and losers since 2009 low | |||
| Winners | Chg. | ||
| American Express | 508.1% | ||
| Home Depot | 291.5% | ||
| Caterpillar | 278.4% | ||
| Walt Disney | 268.1% | ||
| Bank of America | 221.9% | ||
| JPMorgan Chase | 215.7% | ||
| General Electric | 220.8% | ||
| DuPont | 204.5% | ||
| UnitedHealth Group | 202.5% | ||
| Boeing | 162.0% | ||
| Laggards | Chg. | ||
| Microsoft | 84.8% | ||
| Procter & Gamble | 74.7% | ||
| Intel | 72.0% | ||
| Johnson & Johnson | 67.8% | ||
| AT&T | 68.9% | ||
| Alcoa | 59.7% | ||
| Cisco Systems | 60.3% | ||
| Wal-Mart Stores | 53.7% | ||
| Exxon Mobil | 37.8% | ||
| Hewlett-Packard | -18.3% | ||
| Data as of March 8 | |||
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Of course the poor own zero stocks, so they have become poorer... The are victims of the 'public option' in education, They are taught from birth to be on the dole. They, like our President, "57 States", have never had a job. They are democrats (the PC term for socialists).
Is it any wonder we have debt in excess of 16.5 trillion, a record 48 million on food stamps, 8 million less work than 4 years ago? Unemployment at 7.7%!
And more pain and hardship coming for the poor as they continue to see their wealth decline. Obama's war on the middle class will destroy another 12% of the middle classes walth this year alone. The democrats will continue to BELIEVE they can TAX and PRINT their way to prosperity. They continue to beleive that you can BORROW and SPEND our way out of debt.
These democrat policies will end in a depression of epic length and hardship. Enjoy...
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