A Good Day

It's always dangerous to try to read much of anything into one day's worth of movement in the stock market, but sometimes it's fun to take a look at a single day anyway. Especially when we have a day like yesterday, when the Dow rose 143 points, for its biggest one-day gain since February.

The striking thing about yesterday was how broad-based the gains were: 29 of the Dow's 30 components finished the day up. The only loser on the day was Alcoa. Alcoa's problem was that it was overtaken by events, with the Australian government on the verge of passing a levy on mining operations there (Alcoa has major operations in Australia). That's a good day, isn't it? The only way one of the Dow components lost ground was when there was outside news directly affecting that company's bottom line.

Of course, before we get too excited about that, we should remember that it was only last Friday that all 30 components of the Dow were down on the day.