As the saying goes, "One picture is worth a thousand words." This one might be worth several thousand (click to enlarge; in case it isn't clear, the light blue line is oil, the darker line is the Dow). What it shows is the cumulative daily percent change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the same calculation for New York Mercantile Exchange crude oil futures, from Jan. 22, 2001, through last Tuesday (the most recent date for which the U.S. Department of Energy could provide crude prices).
In other words, the chart shows what an equal investment in the Dow and in oil would have returned on any given day since then, up to last week. Obviously, except for the first three years, oil would have been a much better investment than the stock market. Even after the steep decline from last summer's all-time high (when oil was up a staggering 65 percent while the Dow was up a piddly 9 percent), it's still up 29 percent overall. As of Monday's close, the Dow is down 5.5 percent over the same period.
The significance of the starting date, of course, is that it was the first trading day after George W. Bush was sworn in as president.
