Looks like a columnist in Microsoft Investor agrees with me on the narrowness of the market. he puts some numbers behind my "gut feel"
From the article:
The big-cap bull market continues its unrelenting charge. Last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq each posted all-time highs. These indexes, individually or in aggregate, are commonly referred to as "the market" by the talking heads of the nightly news, but these indicators are providing an increasingly inaccurate image of the market. Wall Street only fleetingly offers an accurate reflection of reality, and the indexes are only creating a warped view of the Street's already-distorted reality. Talk about mind-bending; it is beginning to feel like one of Steve Jobs' legendary reality-distortion fields.
Although the Nasdaq Composite index (COMP), which encompasses 5,000-plus stocks, has ascended 28% this year, the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) has advanced 48%. The fantastic four -- Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), Dell Computer (DELL) and Cisco Systems (CSCO), which account for more than 25% of the Nasdaq's value, have appreciated 81%, 16%, 176%, and 86%, respectively this year. The Nasdaq is no longer a mirror of the market, but merely a proxy for a select group of high-profile, large-cap tech stocks. The Nasdaq is not unique. The S&P 500 (SPX) has soared 22% year to date, but the S&P 100 (OEX) is up 26%. While the Russell 1000 is up almost 21%, the Russell 2000 ($IUX) has appreciated less than 6% this year. |
