Closing Arguments: Does Dow’s Magic Number Matter?

it is only numbers,consumer starts spending then only it’s real the economy recover.

Wall St. is doing good because it got money for free to bounce back.
Meanwhile the backbone of this country.. the US workers, got shafted and was told to learn to be more frugal… but that message was not given to Wall St.
Just goes to show how corrupt and misguided our Government is.
Nope… Wall St. doing good mean nothing.
Wall ST. is not the economy… we the working people are.. and if we have no money to spend.. then the economy will never bounce back.
Maybe then the dunder heads in the white house will get it thru their elitists heads.

The Dow Jones is up….still no bank loan credit to business, housing market is still in the tank, and consumer spending and investment is still at an all time low…This tells me that risky investments are being made by a few companies that have unlimited access to foreign funds and investors. Obama’s bailouts and our tax dollars are now showing what the President promised them in the beginning…”Hey guys!!! It’s going to be business as usual.”
The Dow Jones is not an indicator of the “real” economy. Only an indicator of some small movement of money between industrial firms. The really important indicators are the housing market, job formation, consumer spending, and consumer and small business credit loans. I will hold my applause and refrain from popping the champagne cork until I see substantial improvements on the “Second front” of our economy, which still seems to be swirling slowly down the toilet of despair!!!
An indicator of an economy on the mend? HELL NO!!!….A psychological boost??? Only for the greed mongers and parasites on wall street who depend on the market and the misery of millions for a living. Obama…NO HOPE…NO CHANGE… NO NOTHING…ONLY INDECISION AND MORE DITHERING…BUT YOU GOT THE NOBEL PRIZE!!!

As the government prints money and floods the market with liquidity, the market inflates. All the fundamentals are awful, yet … freshly printed cash coupled with euphoria make the Dow fly. Reality will re-assert itself here in an ugly way somewhere down this road. This rally is a temporary detour through the twilight zone.

It is good that the Dow is headed up, but there is nothing magic about the number 10,000. It is just another number on the long road to recovery in the stock markets. The Dow is only 30 stocks. The number that makes more sense to watch is the S&P 500, which is 500 stocks and represents 75% of the market on a capitalized basis. It too is up and on the road to recovery. It has climbed from 667 to 1092, but has a long way to go to 1576 where it was two years ago. 1092 is also just another number.
Most of the market rises so far are just gaining back the final losses during the panic selling by the losers who left the market. If these people behaved more rationally, the market decline would never have been so severe. When the last panic sellers, who are the biggest fools of all, left the market, it reversed and went up.
But we have a long way to go to fix this economy, especially to get jobs growing. This is another area where the Obama administration has yet to do anything whatsoever. When we see some major job gains, then we will know the economy is really on the mend.
Finally, you mention foreclosures. These are a good thing and will help the economy further. They are clearing the housing market of people who were put into houses and had no way of paying their mortgages and thereby caused the whole economic collapse.

With a National debt at $57 trillion and climbing and taxes likely to go up if the Democrats get another term it’s hard to undersatnd what investors are thinking by pushing theDow to this level.
The top economist in the country are all resolute that this is somewhat of a Phantom recovery based on government stimulas and thesocialisation of bank and corporate debt. What happens when the government stops bailing everyone out and thestimulas spending stops???
Don’t get to exited America it ain’t rosie.

Of course it is an indicator of the economy on the mend – no one can deny businesses doing well and investors putting money into business is bad for the economy! But as mentioned in the main post, it is only one of many indicators. And the number that matters most – unemployment – is always a lagging indicator.

- We will need positive job creation at record breaking levels for 60 months just to break even.
Here’s Your Change | Oct 15, 2009 6:46:00 AM
Just to pick on one of your lies, since the recession started in Dec 2007, the economy has lost about 4 million jobs. Under Clinton’s higher taxes (responsible budget control) administration, 2.8 million jobs a year were made. So, we only need about 18 months of job creation equal to the average monthly creation UNDER A DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION. Now, if you are looking at the Republican’s 8 years of ‘leadership,’ where taxes were cut to historically low levels on the rich ‘to stimulate the economy,’ yeah we’d need about 60 months. Because the Republican’s budget destruction (spending without taxing to pay for it) destroyed the economy. And now as a solution they propose – more tax cuts! Lets see if we can get our taxes below Mexico, and just keep putting our infrastructure on the credit card!

People with lots of money control the stock market and could care less if you get burned or not.