Despite recently closing the gap, Papa Dow is closing in on a third straight calendar year of underperformance of other major domestic benchmarks. Up just over 10% so far in 2025, the Dow Jones .DJIA maintains quite a strong technical picture but has less of the “high octane” performance most of us expect in bull market environments from what has become a tech focused world. Regardless of the underperformance, the default chart for .DJIA is still quite appealing, having been ushered higher by the trendline off of 2025 lows. The index maintains a pair of buy signals, having recently pulled back off of 2025 highs to sit just a few boxes above the middle of the trading band.
The point of this report is not to simply provide a technical update for the Dow (although that certainly can be useful for some situations…) but more so to explore the lack of “extreme” moves for the index over the recent past. Muted action on 11/17/2025 sees the Dow Jones having posted now 150 trading days without a -2% day (last was the negative 2.5% move on 4/10/2025) and 135 days without a +2% day. While this doesn’t happen too often, prolonged streaks without a negative 2% day aren’t as rare as you might think. The table below details a list of 22 instances during which .DJIA went without a <=-2% day for 150 days or more since 1970. While 150 days certainly feels like quite a drought, the lack of extreme moves can extend for quite a while, with the average instance lasting just shy of a year (325 days.) Point being, hitting the 150 day milestone doesn’t mean that an uptick in downside volatility is in store on its own… but whenever these streaks do end things seem to pick up. For reference, we also included forward performance after these streaks end, with the more near-intermediate term returns seeing below average or negative returns. It is worth reemphasizing here that these dates are captured when the streak ends, so the table doesn’t apply completely to the current scenario (as the streak hasn’t ended yet…) but watching the Dow for “extreme” downside moves may be important to watch as we move into the final month of the year.
We will wrap up today’s piece with a stock comment for a leader within the Dow. Of course, many of us will be familiar/already have exposure to several of the larger names within the index, but there are still several strong names you could look towards for focused exposure as we move into December. American Express (AXP) is a perfect 5/5’er at the time of this writing, moving back off of 2025 highs towards the middle of its trading band. The relative leader sits on a string of four consecutive buy signals and maintains a position within the top ten of its respective peer matrix. Those looking for exposure could add to positions here, or more defensive players should wait for a reversal back up into X’s at or around $364. As always, utilize the alerts function to be notified of notable changes as they occur in real time.
