Abreast of the market: Big losers of '95 weaken case for bull's strength
Stocks have had a jolly fine year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 32.95% since the beginning of 1995, and the Standard & Poor's 500-Stock Index has risen 33.25%.</br></br>But the march of the averages has masked more than a few difficulties. To be blunt, several sectors of the U.S. stock market have been real dogs. Chain stores have stumbled like Marley's ghost through the entire year, with Caldor, Bradlees and Kmart all losing ground. In December alone, big companies such as Reebok, Advanced Micro Devices, Office Depot, Best Buy and Georgia-Pacific hit 52-week lows.</br></br>Moreover, money managers with diversified portfolios find themselves struggling to keep pace with the blistering pace set by the major market indexes, and small stocks have been market laggards.</br></br>That mixed performance raises several questions about just how strong the 1995 bull market advance has really been and leaves some analysts unimpressed.</br></br>"The advance this year has been somewhat narrow," says Richard McCabe, technical analyst at Merrill Lynch. "Even though breadth hasn't been horrible, it really hasn't been that spectacular. Therefore, you have a handful of blue chips leading the way. In a way, this concentration of strength is almost like the early 1970s, when you had the `nifty fifty' performing so strongly."