Dow Jones outperforms S&P 500 despite falls

The Dow Jones Index has fallen 3.42% for the year to 21 August 2001, outperforming the widely benchmarked S&P 500, which returned -9.08%, in dollar terms. Simon Melluish, head of US equities at Gartmore, says the Dow Jones was predominantly an old economy index at least until May last year when Microsoft and Intel were added. He says: 'Prior to that IBM and Hewlett Packard were the only technology weightings and the Dow Jones underperformed.' He adds that the major difference between the two indices is that the Dow Jones has 30 constituents whereas the S&P 500 covers a much broader spe...