Stocks, Dow Jones Industrial Average | featured news

Faced with Facebook, Starbucks and Angela Merkel, the market chose to focus on Merkel. For a second day, the U.S. stock market powered higher after European leaders, including German chancellor Merkel, pledged to protect the union of 17 countries that use the euro. The Dow Jones industrial average blew past 13,000, a key psychological marker that it hadn't hit since early May.

Investors yanked money out of stocks Thursday after new reports from the U.S. and China pointed to a sharp slowdown in manufacturing. The Dow Jones industrial plunged 251 points, the second-biggest drop this year. Losses in energy and materials companies led a widespread rout on the stock market. The Dow started sinking after 10 a.m., when the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve reported a sharp contraction in manufacturing in the Northeast. The losses accelerated throughout the day.

Apple is the world's most valuable company. The Dow Jones industrial average is probably the world's best-known stock index. So don't they deserve each other? Consider this: If Apple had been added to the Dow in June 2009, the last time there were serious rumors that it would happen, the average would be about 2,500 points higher than it is today and well above its all-time high.

The stock market extended its longest and deepest slump of the year Tuesday, caught between a recurring nightmare of European debt and the beginning of uncertain corporate earnings reports at home. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 213.66 points, its biggest decline of the year and third triple-digit loss...

Stocks are pulling back sharply on Wall Street as investors get their first chance to react to a slowdown in hiring in the United States in March. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 152 points to 12,908 shortly before noon Monday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was off 18 at 1,380, and the Nasdaq composite lost 36 points to 3,044.

Wall Street's bulls have reason to celebrate: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above the psychologically important 13,000 mark for the first time since the financial crisis began in 2008.

U.S. stocks moved higher in a choppy session Tuesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average moving above 13,000 for the first time since May 2008. The 13,000 level doesn’t hold a great deal of significance to market analysts, but “it’s nice to see a symbolic number,” Art Cashin, UBS director of floor operations, told CNBC. The Dow last moved above 13,000 on an intra-day basis on May 20, 2008. It last closed above that level on May 19, 2008.

U.S. stocks closed in on the psychologically important mark of 13,000 for the Dow Jones industrial average as optimism about the Greek bailout and the European financial situation sent stocks up in early trading.

It was just last summer that the Dow Jones industrial average shed 2,000 points in three terrifying weeks. Investors had a host of things to worry about, including the possibility of another recession. Now the Dow is within reach of the rarefied 13,000 mark — a level it hasn't seen since May 2008, four months before the financial system almost came apart.

In order to identify the best and worst stocks in the Dow for 2012, we reviewed the DJIA stocks which had the most and least implied upside.