Published: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 | 3:22 PM ET

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Hovering around the 10,000 level again, the Dow Industrials [.DJIA  Loading...      ()   ] has advanced over 3,400 points since its March closing low of 6,547.05. Since the March 9 low, the price-weighted Dow has gained 53% - underperforming other market cap-weighted indexes like the S&P 500 (up 61%), the Nasdaq Composite (+71%), and the Russell 2000 (up 81%).

While the Dow’s financial stocks have been by far the best performing stocks since that low (Bank of America up 379%, American Express up 231%, JPMorgan up 195%), other industrial and tech stocks have actually been the primary source of the Dow’s move higher.

In fact, JPMorgan [JPM  Loading...      ()   ] is the only financial stock that is among the top five highest impact stocks on the Dow during this period. Furthermore, the five stocks that have impacted the Dow the most since March 9 (IBM, 3M, JPMorgan, Caterpillar, UTX) make up over one-third of the Dow’s total point gains.

It is notable that oil stocks Chevron [CVX  Loading...      ()   ] and ExxonMobil [XOM  Loading...      ()   ], which have the 3rd and 4th highest weighting in the Dow, respectively, have had a noticeably less significant impact on the Dow. Due to their continued underperformance (Chevron up 32%, ExxonMobil up 13%), Chevron is the 10th highest impact on the index, while ExxonMobil has actually had the 7th smallest impact.

Not surprising, many consumer names and defensive stocks have both lagged the most and have had the least impact on the Dow. These stocks include Verizon (VZ), Wal-Mart (WMT), AT&T (T), Pfizer (PFE), Kraft (KFT), and McDonald’s (MCD).


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