Hacker News Reader

Even with this objective, using the share prices and not the market cap of the companies involved creates enormous skew.

For example UNH and especially GS take up the largest individual components despite not being being amongst the largest companies, giving their share movement disproportionate weight in the “index”.

Perhaps it made sense 140 years ago but today it belongs in the rubbish.

> that if industrial companies are doing well

Except it might be very hard to tell that because it’s effectively randomly weighted.

Caterpillar almost has the same weight as MS and double that of Amazon.

Most news reports also give the percentage change as well as the point difference. That began about 20 years ago.