The recent addition of Nike, Goldman Sachs and Visa to the Dow Jones Industrials Average was purely "cosmetic", and could magnify the impact of any steep drop in the stock market, ETFguide predicted.

Because the Dow Industrials weights companies by their share price rather than their market cap or other factor, the three high-flying stocks would have an outsize impact if volatility picks up, the financial site said.

"In what likely will turn out to be an obvious case of returns chasing, an additional sign of a market topping, as well as another situation where calculations and formulas are manipulated for a purpose of covering up fundamentals, the Dow Committee is trying to piggyback off of the continued price gains in Goldman Sachs, Visa, and to a lesser degree Nike," ETFguide asserted in its ETF Profit Strategy newsletter.

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The newsletter estimated the three new stocks – Nike, Goldman Sachs and Visa – would by themselves take the Dow down by 7.1 percent in a serious bear market drop of 40 percent.

By contrast, it was reckoned that the stocks that those three new entries replaced – the more staid Alcoa, Bank or America and Hewlett Packard that were removed from the Dow – would only account for a 0.9 percent fall in the index in the event of the same size bear drop.

Visa made a 52-week intraday high of $201.68 on Monday, Goldman Sachs hit a 52-week high in mid-September high of $170 and Nike made a 52-week intraday high on Monday of $76.37.

ETFguide asserted that because the Dow Industrials index only contains 30 stocks, it lacks sector diversification and make a poor choice for investors who want a core holding to represent the broad U.S. market.

"Time and price will tell us of this benchmark shuffle turns out to be one of the worst timed Dow moves in history," ETFguide said.

The financial news site 24/7 Wall Street noted the 26th anniversary of the 1987 Stock Market Crash occurred over the weekend.

On October 19th of that year, the Dow Industrials plummeted 22.6 percent on that day alone, which become known as Black Monday.

"What makes the 1987 crash unique is that even after twenty-six years of analysis there was not a single smoking gun as the only attributable cause," 24/7 Wall Street concluded.

So far in 2013, the Dow has lagged some other major indexes by a significant margin. As of Monday, the Dow was up 17.5 percent year-to-date, the S&P 500 was up 22.3 percent and the Nasdaq was ahead 29.8 percent.

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