The Dow rose 0.78 percent, or 155.80
points, to close at 20,068.51, as corporate earnings and signs that President
Donald Trump will push through pro-growth policies reignited the equities rally
that stalled a month ago.
Between the worst start to a year
ever, the violent reversals of last March, then Brexit and the U.S. elections
sending stocks into the biggest tailspins since the flash crash, almost
everyone lost their nerve at some point. Now, with the Dow Jones Industrial
Average sailing past 20,000, the virtues of patience, of tuning out the crowd,
are on display once more.
Even accounting for the stasis
that has afflicted global markets for more than a month, the latest
thousand-point surge in the Dow was the second-fastest ever, with shares
jumping on Trump's Wall Street embrace. Led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., almost $2 trillion has been added to U.S. equities in
fewer than 90 days. The rally punctuates an eight-year bull run in which the
century-old gauge managed to rise more than 200% without ever drowning out the
naysayers.
To be sure, gains have settled
down after velocity in the stock market reached some of its highest readings
ever. The Dow had fallen in eight of the prior 11 days. That's a far cry from
December, when one measure of price momentum, the relative strength index,
touched its highest level since 1996.
For anyone who saw Brexit or
Trump as the bull market's death knell and sold, the rally since Election Day
highlights a principal danger of investing: bailing too early. A study by Bank
of America Corp. on periods before and after every market peak since 1937 shows
that being uninvested in the last year of an advance meant missing out of
one-fifth of its return.
At the same time, investors can
be forgiven for being anxious. While the market rupture that followed Britain's
June 23 vote to exit the European Union proved temporary, it was one of five
instances in just two years of what Deutsche Bank AG categorizes as a
historical shift in equity volatility. Before that, it took two decades to
record five such events.
The Dow has advanced 11% since
just before Trump's election, at times posting the fastest rally for a new
president since 1900. With valuations on the 30-stock gauge near the highest in
a decade at a time when earnings growth is close to nonexistent, the question
for investors is how much is left.
Round-number milestones are
customarily dismissed by institutional investors, especially in the Dow, whose
importance as a market barometer ranks a distant second to the S&P 500
Index with professionals. They nevertheless matter to individuals, according to
Dan Veru of Palisade Capital Management, who sees Dow 20,000 as a clarion call
to a class of investor that has largely been absent to date.
In 2016 alone, a net $77 billion
was yanked from mutual and exchange-traded funds that invest in U.S. stocks.
That brings the tally to about $180 billion since the bull market began, data
compiled by Bloomberg and Investment Company Institute show.
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