It's Just Blue Chips (and Dip) as Record Nears; Milestone Causes Pause in Dow As Investors Digest the Bull Run; Where Are the Nasdaq and S&P?
THE PARTY TO celebrate a record for the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been postponed.</br></br>There are plenty of reasons, one of which is that not everyone got an invitation.</br></br>As the Dow industrials surged 5% in less than a month, returning almost to the record close of 11722.98 that dated from Jan. 14, 2000, two other major indexes were running out of steam and rising more slowly -- 3% for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and 1.5% for the Nasdaq Composite Index. Both hit records in March 2000 and neither is near a return to those levels.</br></br>The divergence troubles some investors.</br></br>"What you'd typically want to see is a broad-based rally with all boats rising," says Peter Wall, chief investment officer for Chase Private Client Services, a brokerage and money-management arm of J.P. Morgan Chase. The fact that some indexes are looking weaker than others "is a sign that we are in the mature or the end phase of a bull market."