Monday, June 23, 2008

Moronic Focus on the Dow Jones Industrial Average

link

OK. I totally understand that the Dow Jones Industrial Average means exactly what it means -- some arbitrary composition of the values of the 50 companies Rupert Murdoch feels are most representative of large public companies -- and nothing else. And focusing on the DJIA (to its friends) has blinkered us to many persistent intractable economic problems. I'm really going to try to stop talking about it.

But, it's so fun watching the line bounce between its technical levels! It's simple! And we get the false sense that our finger is on the pulse of the economy, and we should encourage our policy makers to harrumph smokily together and further beggar the American people in order to gin up this index.

It is, of course, inconceivable that the Dow could lose another 306 points (2.6%) and pass the 52-week low of 11,508.70 or even to close just 102 points (0.86 %) down and pass the March 10 close of 11,740.. But, if it did -- and, I assure you, tongue in cheek, that this is extraordinarily unlikely -- the next 'technical level' it would have to break through would be the last previous lower close, which was 11,727.34 on October 3 of 2006. I really don't predict we'll hit the Bush 43 Presidency low of 7286.27 from October 9 of 2002, but we could pass where the last president left us at 10,587.59 on January 19, 2001, as my DJIA predictions have two bases, neither of which are grounded in what one might call equity analysis:

  1. The Dow'll hang around each even power of ten for about 10 years
  2. The Bush League is a bunch of incompetent liars, and any sort of gain anyone has made under this presidency is an illusion born of their gymcrackery.

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