Back in the late 1800s, Charlie Dow was a journalist in Springfield Massachusetts.
His job was to write about the stock market. But when he would go knocking on doors asking companies questions, they would tell him, “Our business is none of your business”.
So how could poor Charlie do his job then?
Well, he concluded that there was a better way to do this.
He recognized that there were a select group of stocks that, “Made the goods”, and he called those the Industrials.
And then there was the group of companies that, “Delivered those goods”. At the time, they were the Railroads.
If one of these groups of stocks were going up in price, and so was the other group, then things are moving in a positive direction together. Those were good signs for the market.
It was specifically when one of those groups were rising, but the other one wasn’t, that something was likely wrong.
And boy was he right. [Read more…]