Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The CAT that got the cream

Worth Civils has a post at the WSJ's MarketBeat blog titled "Midday Tidbits: Cat’s Influence" in which he names some of the movers in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and gives an off-the-cuff discourse on index construction.

By a good bit, the biggest contributor to the blue-chip average’s 2007 gains has been Caterpillar, which has accounted for 205 points, or 13.4%, of the Dow’s gains. Alcoa is next at 131 points, or 8.6%, followed by Honeywell (129 points, 8.4%) and United Technologies (122 points, 8%). After that are Exxon Mobil, Boeing, 3M and IBM, which account for about 7% each.

What's pertinent to this humble attempt at a blog is that of the eight names a quarter of them are members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (it's 3 of 9 if you count Alcan). CAT took heat for their USCAP membership at their annual meeting last month.

If you remember, AltEnergyStocks did a comparison of the USCAP founders stocks vs. the four largest coal companies, with USCAP found wanting. I don't know if Mr. Civils' observation is a reversal, a reversion or what but I thought I thought I should pass it along.