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Dow Closes Above 10,000 for First Time in Over a Year
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The Dow Jones industrial average, one of the most-watched markers of the financial world, closed above 10,000 points on Wednesday, a milestone of the stock market’s recovery from the depths of the financial crisis.
At the close, the Dow was up 144.8 points or 1.5 percent at 10,015.86. It had not closed above 10,000 since Oct. 3, 2008.
“The last time we saw 10,000 we were going the wrong way,” said Doreen Mogavero, president of the brokerage Mogavero, Lee & Company, who was on the trading floor Wednesday afternoon. “This is a little bit nicer feeling.”
Last October, the Dow fell below 10,000 as Washington rushed in to avoid an all-out collapse of the financial system.
But now, while the Dow has recovered 3,450 points since bottoming out in early March, it and other major stock indexes are still shadows of their former selves, meaning that many investors are a long way from whole.
The Dow is more than 4,000 points off its all-time highs, and broader measures of the market are down 30 percent from their peaks. And the companies that constitute the stock indexes are still grappling with shaky revenues, credit losses and huge uncertainties about the American economy’s long-term growth.
But on Wednesday, shares pushed higher after a major bank turned a $3.6 billion profit, earnings rose at a major computer-chip maker, and retail sales held up better than expected.
Investors went shopping on the reports, lifting stock markets from London to New York to Mexico City.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 1.75 percent or 18.83 points higher at 1,092.02, and the Nasdaq was up 1.5 percent or 32.34 points at 2,172.23.
The Dow first closed above 10,000 in March 1999. It retreated in the years after the dot-com bubble deflated, then retook 10,000 in late 2003 and peaked at 14,000 in October 2007.
Still, many investment specialists dismiss the significance of such big, round benchmark numbers, and say that no sophisticated investors or hedge funds make investment decisions based on whether a stock index’s total value can be measured in four or five digits.
“It’s psychological,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, chief technical analyst at Citigroup Capital Markets.
The major stock indexes have rebounded by 50 percent or more in a scorching rally that began in early March and galloped higher through the summer and early autumn, as the economy stabilized and once-bleeding companies began to report better profits and rising revenue.
That optimism got louder on Wednesday.
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