Rabbitoh, partly that is due to the way our index is calculated compared to the DOW. The DJIA is poorly calculated imo, only the top few companies out of the 30 have to move by a a few $'s either way and the entire DJIA gets shifted with it, dwarfing any opposite move of the lesser companies in the DJIA.
Due to that reason it is a little scary how much people watch the DJIA as a world indicator. Just because Microsoft and HP had a bad day doesn't mean the rest of the market did, yet people will panic at a 150 point drop in the DJIA and sell their perfectly fine stock that is probably running on Linux and refilled printer cartridges anyway ;)
