The market: It is what it is

By Dian Vujovich

If you’re at all like me, you’ve heard that “It is what it is” phrase more times than you’d like. It seems to be a blanket response for everything from the behavior of bad neighbors to accepting news of any kind—the good and the bad.

There’s no doubt about it, recently stocks have seen a lot of this year’s up-ticks turn into down-ticks recently. But for anyone with years of market experience, that’s no big deal. In fact, it’s part of the natural rhythm of the equity arena as the money dance on Wall Street has various tempos: After a few steps forward there’s always a few steps back.  Every long-term chart shows that.

As this end of June trading week begins, I’d like to remind investors of how the DJIA has preformed over the past four years. This will be just a short comparison  using my $20 a share stock review.

Faithful readers will remember that on March 4, 2009, in mid-after noon there were one dozen stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average trading  under $20 a share. Under 10 bucks were:  Alcoa (AA), $6.11 per share; Bank of America (BAC), $3.57; Citigroup (C), $1.17; General Electric (GE), $6.29; and General Motors (GM), $2.13. And under 20: American Express (AXP), $11.50; DuPont (DD), $18.02; Home Depot (HD), $18.90; Intel (INTC), $12.76; Microsoft (MSFT), $16.14; Pfizer (PFE) $12.28; and Disney (DIS), $16.83.

As of Friday, June 21, 2013 all of that had changed. Dramatically.

At the close of Friday’s trading day only two stocks in the DJIA were priced under 20 a share. Two! They were Alcoa (AA), it closed at $7.98 a share and Bank of America (BAC) at $12.69.

As for the other 10 stocks that used to be really cheap, here’s how they closed: American Express (AXP), $73,31 (from $11.50); and Disney (DIS), $62.73 (from $16.83). DuPont (DD), $52.91 (from $18.02); General Electric (GE), $23.36 (from $6.29); Home Depot (HD), $73.82 (from $18.90); Intel (INTC), $24.20 (from $12.76); Microsoft (MSFT), $33.25 (from $16.14); and Pfizer (PFE) $28.46 (from $12.28).

Citigroup and General Motors are no longer a DJIA components.

Based on the DJIAs cheapo stocks, we’ve certainly seen some nice growth in their per share prices over the past few years.  As for the future, who knows? But till then, this market is  what it is.