Aiken offers insights in News & Record article about Dow hitting 20,000

An article about a record-breaking uptick in the Dow Jones Industrial Average this week as it topped the 20,000 mark for the first time featured insights from Adam Aiken, assistant professor of finance in the Love School of Business. 

​Reporter Dick Barron with the Greensboro News & Record reached out to Aiken for his take on the new milestone for the New York Stock Exchange, which has seen consistent increases since late last year. 

Aiken noted that the Dow isn’t the best tool for measuring the health of the economy, as a big increase for one company’s stock price could skew the results upward. Aiken suggests that the S&P 500, which reflects the stock performance of the country’s 500 largest companies, is a more accurate metric, and didn’t mince words in offering his opinion about the Dow. 

“I think it’s just the history associated with Dow,” Aiken told Barron for the article, which appeared on the front page on Jan. 26, 2017, but not online. Aiken said that “from a financial standpoint it’s just about the worst index out there.”