the dow jones industrial average is trading up thursday afternoon with shares of merck and home depot seeing positive growth for the index shares of merck mrk and home depot hd are contributing to the indexs intraday rally as the dow djia is trading 143 points 04 higher mercks shares have climbed 177 21 while those of home depot are up 586 or 20 combining for a roughly 50point bump for the dow other components contributing significantly to the gain include walgreens boots wba procter  gamble pg and