Bull, Bear or Sideways markets

I read this article on Zerohedge on Making money when market go nowhere and the first that comes to mind, is how can you compare apples with pears and still say there is a trend. The composition of the DOW in the 1930s was completely different than the ones currently in the dow. All the losers have left the DOW and the good ones have been added. If you would start off with original composition of the DOW i believe that the Bull and Bear markets in this article would look much different. These are the original 12 stocks that were included in the DOW in 1896:

• American Cotton Oil Company, a predecessor company to Bestfoods, now part of Unilever.
• American Sugar Company, became Domino Sugar in 1900, now Domino Foods, Inc.
• American Tobacco Company, broken up in a 1911 antitrust action.
• Chicago Gas Company, bought by Peoples Gas Light in 1897, now an operating subsidiary of Integrys Energy Group.
• Distilling & Cattle Feeding Company, now Millennium Chemicals, formerly a division of LyondellBasell, the latter of which is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• Laclede Gas Company, still in operation as the Laclede Group, Inc., removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1899.
• National Lead Company, now NL Industries, removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1916.
• North American Company, an electric utility holding company, broken up by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1946.
• Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company in Birmingham, Alabama, bought by U.S. Steel in 1907.
• U.S. Leather Company, dissolved in 1952.
• United States Rubber Company, changed its name to Uniroyal in 1961, merged with private B.F. Goodrich in 1986, bought by Michelin in 1990.