Dow Jones Index Closes Above 14,000
Americans are doing something they haven’t done in years — they’re buying stocks.
Individual investors are pouring money into the stock market this year. They’ve been drawn by the powerful rally in share prices and are desperate for better returns than the minuscule yields available from bonds and bank accounts.
This renewed enthusiasm helped the Dow Jones industrial average achieve a milestone Friday, surging above 14,000 points for the first time since the financial crisis struck.
The world’s best-known stock index has more than doubled from its crisis-era low and is nearing an even more impressive mark — a new all-time high. After closing at 14,009.79 points on Friday, the Dow is less than 155 points from its October 2007 peak.
“We’ve come a long way,” said Seth Masters, chief investment officer at Bernstein Wealth Management Group in New York. “There was a great financial crisis five years ago and there was a lot of repair that had to happen in the corporate world and for consumers.”