Investors are now laughing about the Dow Jones Industrial Average's (^DJI -0.31%) 216-point drop on Monday, as the index has now bounced back to land about 30 points ahead where it started Monday. After gaining 116 points yesterday and, as of 1 p.m. EST today, another 136 points, the Dow sits at 14,030. Monday's drop was caused by fear over the Italian elections, but great housing numbers, higher consumer confidence, and reassuring comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have restored investors' confidence.
Market participants are feeling so good today that all three of the major U.S. indexes are soaring. The S&P 500, the NASDAQ, and the Dow are all up just short of 1%.
So who's down on the Dow?
Shares of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ 2.06%) have been on fire lately. The stock price rose by 14.35% last week alone, and before today's slight pullback it was up more than 3% in just two days. But some investors may be concerned the price has risen too fast and are taking profits today, causing the stock to fall a negligible 0.15% and making HP the only loser on the Dow today. It's rather typical for a stock to take a breather after having such a spectacular run, so today's move was to be expected. While current investors should be happy with their recent returns, future investors need to consider that the stock may sit at these levels for some time and that if future profits and revenue do not match expectations, shares will likely fall to previous levels.
Shares of McDonald's (MCD -0.31%) have been bouncing between positive and negative territory this morning, though they are now up 0.26% -- which actually places the stock among the three worst-performing Dow stocks of the day. While the markets in general may have forgotten about the issues in Europe, McDonald's shareholders have not. In the past, the company was able to weather economic problems around the world, but as my colleague Dan Caplinger recently pointed out, "McDonald's doesn't have the same margin of safety it did five years ago, especially with a rising dollar potentially pressuring earnings."
