On October 9, 2007, most of us in the finance world were riding pretty darn high. We had watched a frothy market runup that had been unprecedented. On that day, the Dow Jones hit its still all time high of 14,164. From there it rode its way all the way down to the 6000s range by March of 2009, when it started its current ride back up.
I was a bell-bottom wearing 12 year old when the Dow first hit 1000 in the early 1970s after taking 76 years to get to that point. It hit 10,000 in March 1999. And now here we are.
As I write this the Dow is now at 14,014, just 150 points shy of that 2007 all time high. But this hoped for new record is in a different world, isn’t it? We remain stuck in economic doldrums, real estate only slowly now beginning to recover, corporate profits improving, unemployment still a real problem. Let’s hope this is a manageable rally that finds manageable corrections and keeps moving ahead.
