The Standard & Poor’s 500, the New York Stock Exchange index, the American Exchange index and the NASDAQ over-the-counter index are all now standing above the highs that they made in late summer 1987 before Meltdown Monday brought that particular party to a close, and only the gran’daddy of them all, and the most widely followed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 leading stocks has failed to break through its previous all-time high – but why should this be, and who is to blame?There is one stock in the index that is letting the side down badly, and when you measure it from its all-time high of $175.875 to its current range of around $114 you get a fall of 62 points, equivalent to 93.89 composite points on the Dow, and the Dow is only around 69 points off its all-time high of 2,722.42; who is responsible for this unsatisfactory state of affairs?Why, none other than John Akers and his cronies at Armonk – IBM is the one stock in the index that has badly underperformed.
