From today's Wall Street Journal (page A20 in the print edition):
On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finally closed above its all-time high on Jan. 14, 2000. Although this accomplishment gained significant media coverage, the milestone brought forth little applause from market analysts. They maintained that "virtually no one indexes to the Dow," and many called the Dow industrials an archaic price-weighted index of a bygone era. These cynics claimed that the capitalization-weighted S&P 500 or Russell 3000 indices were much better indicators of the market, and these yardsticks were still 10% below their record highs reached in March 2000. The naysayers should wise up. Not only has the "outdated" industrials given investors better returns than such widely watched benchmarks as the S&P 500 Index, but it better reflects what the market has done over the past decade than the more popular capitalization-weighted indices...
The outsized influence of the tech sector in 2000 greatly distorted the capitalization-weighted indices. There are 10 sectors in the S&P 500 Index: technology, financials, health care, utilities, industrials, energy, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, and materials and telecom. If we exclude the tech sector, the S&P 500 would be 16% above its level reached in 2000...
The Dow industrials, while containing only 30 blue chip companies, is more representative of the performance of investors who shied away from the tech and Internet mania that gripped the markets in 2000. Let's not downplay the significance of this oldest but most venerable index of stock market values.
So there.
(If you don't usually spend your time thinking about the distinction between price-weighted and capitalization-weighted stock indexes, you can find more information here.)
UPDATE: Looking for one of those "naysayers"? If you have a subscription, the Financial Times has the columnist for you.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Naysaying of the "who cares about the stock market, the economy still sucks" sort is provided at Angry Bear and at Beat the Press. Also, Barry Ritholtz points to "a terrific breakdown of the Dow's components by sectors over at the free section of the WSJ".