Wilshire Associates warned investors to "avoid over-reacting to the Dow" as it hovers around the 10000 mark. Wilshire said the level of the Dow Jones industrial average is not reflective of the market's real performance. Stephen Nesbitt, senior vice president of Wilshire Associates, pointed out that the rest of the market is up only about half as high as the Dow.
"The Dow is flawed. It is biased toward the very large companies, measures only 20 percent of the market, and fails to approximately weight stocks in the index," Nesbitt said. "In the Dow, companies with the largest stock prices carry the most weight, pulling up the entire index and creating illusions about the market."