Broad stock market indexes were up in 2023 with technology stocks outperforming several other sectors. Here's a look at the biggest gainers and laggards in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
What Happened: The Dow Jones Industrial Average was created in 1896 by Charles Dow and is one of the oldest and most followed equity indexes for overall stock market health. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high of more than $37,000 in December 2023.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average consists of 30 stocks on a price-weighted basis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF DIA, which tracks the index, is one of the most invested and followed ETFs.
In 2023, 19 of the Dow Jones component stocks were up, with 11 stocks declining for the full year.
The top five gainers for the full year were:
- Salesforce Inc CRM: +98.5%
- Intel Corporation INTC: +90.1%
- Microsoft Corp MSFT: +56.8%
- Apple Inc AAPL: +48.2%
- Boeing Co BA: +36.8%
The top five losers for the full year were:
- Walgreens Boots Alliance WBA: -30.1%
- Chevron Corporation CVX: -16.9%
- Johnson & Johnson JNJ: -11.3%
- 3M Co MMM: -8.8%
- Coca-Cola Co KO: -7.4%
Four of the top five best-performing Dow components ranked in the top five at the mid-point of the year, with Salesforce, Apple, Microsoft and Intel ranking first, second, third and fourth, respectively, at the end of June.
Boeing jumped to the top five, passing American Express Company AXP, which ended the year tied for sixth with a 26.8% gain on the year.
Microsoft and Apple were two of the top gainers for the Dow Jones in 2023 and among the most talked about stocks for the year and gainers in other indexes. Microsoft made a splash in the artificial intelligence sector with a $10 billion investment in ChatGPT parent OpenAI in January. Apple released the newest version of the iPhone in the fall.
Intel was one of many chip stocks that saw a surge in its share price, but the 90% gain trailed the performance of NVIDIA Corporation NVDA, which was up over 220% in 2023.
For the losers, Walgreens led the way with a 30% drop in its share price. Oil stock Chevron ranked second with a near 17% drop, which came after oil stocks outperformed in 2022.
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Why It's Important: After being up around 4% through the first six months of 2023, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained a total of over 14% for the full year.
The gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average comes after 2022, which saw an 8.5% decline. Through the first six months of 2023, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF was up 3.9%, with a strong second half leading to a double-digit gain.
The gains of the Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged several other major stock market indexes including the S&P 500, which was up 24.2% and the Nasdaq 100, which was up 53.8% for the full year.
The performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other indexes was likely overshadowed by the performance of the Magnificent 7 stocks in 2023. The seven technology stocks of Alphabet Inc GOOGGOOGL, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, Apple, Meta Platforms I META, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla Inc TSLA were among the top gainers in 2023 and made up a sizable portion of gains for indexes they were included in.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and other stock market indexes could be closely monitoring the 2024 presidential election, which could see the new year bring gains as in past years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7.3% in 2020, 13.4% in 2016 and 7.3% in 2012, the three most recent presidential election years. The average return of the index is +5.4% over the past 16 presidential election years.
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