What’s your take on the big GM bankruptcy and the shakeup in the Dow’s lineup of 30 stocks? If you’re just getting back to your trading dashboard: General Motors (GM) and Citigroup (CITI) got the boot on Monday out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA or “the Dow”), replaced by Cisco (CSCO) and Travelers (TRV). The change takes effect Monday 6/8.

Over at Seeking Alpha Trader Mike gave a concise summary (via Bloomberg) of what these changes mean to the fabled Dow; he snuck in a few digs at the choice of these replacements, too. IndexUniverse also blinked at the unusual choice of Travelers, a much smaller insurer than many of its competitors and considerably less of a heavyweight stock than the other 29 companies in the index.

You might also get a kick out of SmartMoney’s roundup of 7 Big Bankruptcies That Rocked the Markets. The results of each were often surprising.

But on to the real meat of this discussion: what does the future hold for GM, post-bankruptcy? I haven’t been tracking every developing wrinkle in this story, but it’s clear you folks are: GM remains at the top of our Trading Activity page for most-active stocks among TK clients, and it’s a hugely discussed topic around our Trader Network. (Just search for “GM” and see how many diverse forum threads, Trade Notes, and blog posts you’ll find – plenty of coffee-break reading.)

Look into your crystal ball and tell me: where will GM be 5 years from now? And what aspects of the U.S. economy will be taken along with it?

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Well I was personally disappointed that neither AAPL or GOOG were added. ate least one of these would have been better than Travellers. However, as a technology add, CSCO was an ok choice too.

As for the future GM, we will all still be driving GM cars 5 years from now, but what the most popular vehicles are will change. This really was just a big flip of the reset switch for the industry and the market in general.

Similar to how things work after doing it to a computer, it is up to the users to make sure what they did to cause the need for the reset doesn't happen again. However, as is also the case with computers, sometimes the need for a reset is internal and due to machine failure. This would require replacement of the 'faulty or failing' part or parts.

Lets hope both of these things get done with respect to the economy and for goodness sake, let us not get so complacement as to let this happen again.

I find it hilarious that citi gets delisted and travelers get's added.  Travelers and Citi merged and split a few years ago if I recall correctly.

Funny, gethoht, I noticed the same thing and wondered at the choice - is it a deliberate poke in the eye to Citi? I don't track C or TRV actively, but clearly their business prospects must have diverged a lot. I have watched with interest over the past few years as Citi abandoned the red umbrella logo that they paid so much to Travelers for not so long ago, and how TRV has now re-adopted that iconic symbol. Not sure how the economics of the logo transfers worked out, but it's been interesting to watch through a consumer's eyes, I think.

Incidentally, there's a nice interactive component to Dow Jones' website about their most famous index. Click around on your next coffee break: http://www.djindexes.com/DJIA110/learning-center/