It isn't doing that great. Overall it is flat and barely getting back to 2008 levels.
You have several factors going on. 1. The new norm is the slow markets and businesses adapt to the market and start to make a profit again, even if the overall economy is in a downturn. 2. After the steep crash, people are starting to re-enter the market hoping for a turn around.
However, all is not as great as it appears. One thing to look at is the volume. Outside the blue chips, there isn't a lot of movement, especially on OTC market stocks. This means that small investors are dropping out and it is mostly institutional investors doing the trading. I've noticed this on a lot of OTC Pink Slip stocks I have. There are many days where you have virtually no trades on the stocks. I have one that is a supplier to AAPL so you would think it would do well, but it has very little attention at all in the market. It is just the institutions playing the big names.
Now that is the one thing that keeps coming up, the volume is down.
So would I be correct in thinking that if no one trades much, but all of a sudden someone involved with the institutional investors makes a few trades at the end of the day with some blue chippers, the stock market then goes up when the rest of the stock market has not moved or even worse dropped.
So sure the blue chippers, which is what is basically reported for the overall markets losses and gains, may show an increase. However, as you say the overall volume is way down.
I still question the whole reason they changed the makeup of what companies are used to track the DOW.
If the old blues chippers where still the basis for the stock market rating, I wonder if we would get a better idea of what it really is.