Posted on 06/20/2018 7:56:38 AM PDT by Red Badger
After more than a hundred years as a component in the Dow Jones industrial average, General Electric will be replaced by drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance next week.
But GE investors may take solace in the recent history of stock price out performance from the companies booted from the Dow.
On Tuesday David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement adding Walgreens to the Dow Jones industrial average will make the index "more representative of the consumer and health-care sectors of the U.S. economy."
"Today's change to the (Dow Jones industrial average) will make the index a better measure of the economy and the stock market," Blitzer said.
The change will occur prior to the open on Tuesday, June 26.
Many will say this change by the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, marks a passing of the baton. GE's industrial manufacturing days are over as the economy shifts to a more service orientation.
Time and time again, new trends replace old ones in the Dow. For example, take Cisco replacing General Motors in 2009 or Nike replacing Alcoa in 2013.
But this theory is not one to base your investing on, recent history shows.
"Lastly, while a negative in the near-term [for GE], we note that recent removals from the index have gone on to outperform the DJIA in the 12-months following the announcement," Goldman's Joe Ritchie said in a note to clients Tuesday.
The most recent removal before General Electric soundly outperformed the S&P 500 in the year after getting booted, according to CNBC data.
AT&T shares rose 15 percent in the 12-months after it got replaced by Apple in the Dow versus the S&P 500's 2 percent decline in the same time period.
Alcoa's stock soared even higher with 96 percent return in the year after its exit.
It seems that by the time the index committee acts to remove an underperforming stock, most of the fundamental deterioration is already priced into the shares and so you see a rebound.
GE shares fell as much as 3 percent in after hours trading following the decision Tuesday. After opening lower on Wednesday, the stock rebounded to near positive.
Investors initially sold off GE shares perhaps due to the recent Wall Street concern over retail shareholder sentiment.
Deutsche Bank's John Inch had warned in January that GE would likely be dropped from the Dow this year and that such a move would hurt its shares.
"We believe headline risk to be the most significant risk factor if GE were to be dropped from the Dow — potentially amplified by GE's high mix of retail investors (roughly 40% of GE's common stock is held by retail investors)," the analyst wrote.
This is a Jack Welch legacy. Nobody destroyed companies like Jack. I do see the financial press laying the blame at Jeff immelmann’s feet. But Jeff was just Jack’s proxy. Jack Welch destroyer of worlds.
This is an illustration of something I do think the SEC should regulate: the Board of Directors represent the interests of the shareholders and they hire corporate officers to run the company. Allowing one of those officers to take over the Board as chairman puts the officers in charge of the board, not the shareholders. The Chair will never fire himself as CEO. It's a fundamental conflict of interest that robs shareholders of their control of the company. It's why a loser like Immelt can ruin a company over many many years and never be held accountable. It should be banned.
Well, Apple does build things.. (er, Chinese slaves build things for Apple. Boeing would be one of the “indutries” left.
RE: Well, Apple does build things.. (er, Chinese slaves build things for Apple. Boeing would be one of the “indutries” left.
Do you know where GE builds their engines, appliances, equipment, etc. ?
They need to compare the performance with the overall market. If the market went up 100% and the booted stock goes up 15% then there is no solace in that.
There is a kick to DOW companies because of index funds.
I'm not so sure. Welch was ruled by numbers. If you are #1 or #2 in your industry you are kept. If you are #3 or lower, see ya, plants closed. Foolish. But there was at least some logic to it.
Immelt seemed to not care if he was #1, he just shuttered and sold everything except services. Initially that made some sense (not really, but to him it did) because profit margins were immense for services and less so for capital intense businesses. So GE became a glorified bank under Immelt. And he kissed govt ass heavily, he wanted to be James Taggart (Atlas Shrugged reference). But 2008 happened and overly leveraged financial services businesses without a strong base of other sources of revenue were exposed. GE the banking firm never recovered. And that was Immelt.
How can it be an ‘Industrial’ Index without ‘Industry’?................Walgreens?........................
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It’s a historic term. They probably keep it around due to recognition.
That was my first thought...maybe Walgreen’s has factories producing drug bottles?
They need to compare the performance with the overall market.
...
Hello? They mentioned a 2% decline in the S&P 500.
Nobody made working more miserable than Jack.
Here is my experience. I worked for a company that distributed for a major manufacturer. I launched a new mark segment with an existing product that was proven unsuitable. An engineering team was created to solve the issue. One manager, four engineers. Four hand picked engineers. We worked with the customer reengineered some critical components and successfully relaunched. Sat down had a beer with the engineer group manager. She told me she was required to rank her hand picked and successful team. Bottom ranked member would have his career destroyed, top ranked would be promoted.
This was a Six Sigma manufacturer who went all in on the Jack Welch system. What a mess.
I asked the manager how she would choose the low man. She said she would have to draw straws. Thanks Jack.
Appliances was sold to Haier, a Chinese company, two years ago.
I was able to retire early because of that sale.
I got my money out of GE stock at $56 a share before Jack Welch started dumping his billion dollars of options , it sank to $6 a share and hasn’t really recovered, trading around $12 today.
Um, ... AKA “Neutron” Jack.
I worked for GE Appliances for 32 years.
Jack Welch instituted some really stupid policies, but the worst was his “management go-round”.
He did not believe that managers needed to know the businesses they were running.
Plastics guys would get put in charge of appliances.
Appliance guy goes to jet engines.
Constantly shifting people around resulted in wasted effort as the new guy undid his predecessor’s plan and implemented his own.
Each new manager relearning the business basics. Jack destroyed institutional intellectual property. He destroyed legacy knowledge. Destroyed the ability of companies to develop long term strategies. How could they? Every manager was new.
Jack was known as the guy who trained the competition. Because eventually everyone got pushed out and went back to work in the field they knew. Competing with GE.
Here's my GE story: I worked for them for a while but I'm going to talk about my father. He worked in the defense industry as a program manager for RCA. His primary competition was GE. Fortunately for him, GE in the 80s was crooked. They were censured, people went to jail and they were almost banned from doing defense work (they should have been). But too big to fail, I guess. So they old man would talk to his customers and say "do you want to do business with an bunch of unethical crooks that only care about numbers at any cost, or do you want to do business with a company that always plays it straight, always gets it done and all legally?"
Anyway the CEO of RCA robbed the company and broke it up. GE bought RCA's defense business for pennies on the dollar. All of sudden my old man was forced to go to all those customers and say "Uh, you know GE is a strong company and uh, well, ah hell. Forget it." He retired at the peak of his career rather than deal with trying to spin for an ethically challenged company.
By that time I was working there too and we had a dart board on the wall with a picture of Jack Welch taped to it. Everybody hated Jack Welch except for the people who embraced his buzzword bingo initiatives, people we all viewed as collaborators. Fortunately Neutron Jack only cared about NBC and sold us all off to a good company after a couple of years. But I know about Jack Welch. Believe me, I don't make excuses for him. I know people who worked for GE and weren't forced into an unwanted marriage with them and they loved it. Some may be on this thread and may resent my story. It's all true and all I can say to them is I assume that their plants weren't closed for no reason by Jack Welch.
Yep, I watched literally hundreds of years of experience get shoved out the door.
I believe everything you say. I think the long term decline of GE supports my contention that the Jack Welch way was an infection that destroyed the way people work and the conventions that informally governed relationships between corporations and employees Destructive even toxic.
When american corporations treat American workers like a commodity, then no surprise when they open plants in Mexico and Vietnam and shutter plants here.
oops
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