With considerable fanfare, the Dow Jones industrial average finally breached the 20,000 threshold at Wednesday’s market open.
But here’s another way of looking at it: The aggregate value of the 30 companies on the Dow has risen $273 billion since President Donald Trump’s surprise election on Nov. 8—a jump of 9%. That gave the 30 major companies a combined market cap of nearly $5.7 trillion by mid-day Wednesday.
The Dow is a price-weighted index, which means that more expensive stocks have a greater impact on the indicator. So it was Goldman Sachs, the priciest stock on the list, that led the Dow over 20,000 with near 30% returns since the elections.
But while Goldman has posted the highest returns of any Dow stock since the election, it was not the company that added the most in market cap. Goldman gained $32 billion in market cap, reaching $94.5 billion since Trump’s victory, but J.P. Morgan Chase added $53 billion to its market cap for a value of $303 billion by Wednesday. J.P. Morgan was also the second-best performing stock on the Dow since the elections.
The two stocks have surged largely thanks to the Trump administration’s deregulatory stance on businesses and specifically, banks. Treasury Secretary pick Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs alumnus like many of Trump’s cabinet members, has called to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act. Bank investors have also cheered Trump’s increased spending plans, which are expected to hasten rate hikes and boost the financial sector’s profitability.
Granted, not all of the Dow 30 increased their own market cap. Shares of Procter and Gamble, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson and Johnson have each fallen since Nov. 8.
