But people watch it. There is no denying Dow 10,000 resonates, at some level, with investors around the world, and that matters.
”I think it’s a pretty big deal,” says Bob Reynolds, the chief executive of Putnam Investments. “The market is up over 50 percent. A milestone like this will attract more people and that has a way of feeding on itself. I think it’s big for the market.”
Maybe. But the really big investment story of 2009 is the continued strength of a broader stock market rally that, as Reynolds points out, has pushed prices more than 50 percent higher since the darkest day of early March. Just when skeptics warn stock values have gotten too far ahead of the economic recovery, the market moved higher. Dow 10,000 is an exclamation point to that rally.
The Dow’s performance for 2009, up 14.1 percent, actually trails most other key stock market benchmarks in the United States and around the world. The Standard Poor’s 500 is up 20.9 percent this year, climbing more than 61 percent from its March 9 bottom. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index has soared 37.7 percent this year. Around the world, most leading stock indexes are up more than 20 percent. Only Japan’s Nikkei, among leading global stock market benchmarks, has gained less than the Dow.
Those numbers demonstrate the striking depth and power of the global stock market rally. Eight months ago investors were terrified to jump in. Now many are afraid to miss out.
”The market’s a bit of a runaway train right now,” says Tom Manning, chief investment officer of Silver Bridge Advisors Inc. in Boston. “Investors fear they are missing out on the largest rally in the history of the stock market and they don’t want to be left behind.”
So what’s next? The immediate future - where stock prices are headed in the weeks ahead - will be driven by the torrent of quarterly corporate earnings reports just getting started.
