Dow 30

US equity futures are unchanged, trading near record highs after digesting a spate of earnings results on Thursday. The dollar pared its weekly loss as the yen and pound slid, while gold headed for its longest slump in three months. European equities fell and markets in Asia were mixed, while markets in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam were closed Friday for the start of Lunar New Year. Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore had shortened sessions.

Submitted by Tim Price via SovereignMan.com,

On March 30, 1999, the Wall Street Journal’s front page headline blasted the good news across the world:

“Dow Industrials Top 10,000”

The day before, the all-important US stock index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, closed above 10,000 for the first time in history.

It was a major milestone, and investors cheered.

Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Another View On The Inflation Argument

There is little evidence that current levels of inflation are stable. As I wrote in “Inflation: The Good & The Bad”, outside of just two areas, rent and health care, there remains a broader deflationary trend currently.

Importantly, as I noted, there are two types of inflation:

After over a month of foreplay, Dow 20,000 is in the rearview mirror.

And yet in retrospect, it didn't take long. Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid looks at how Dow numbers were first achieved and how long it took between each 1000 increment. Firstly the Dow only hit 1000 for the first time in January 1987. 5000 was reached in November 1995, 10000 in December 2003 and 15000 in May 2013. This is the quickest ever between round number thousand point increments as it only took 64 calendar days to go from 19000 to 20000.

With global stock markets basking in the afterglow of Dow crossing 20,000 for the first time, on Thursday they propelled higher in sympathy with the US, as Asia and Europe are trading solidly in the green, as is the dollar which rebounded strongly off a 5 week low. Copper touched the highest price since November after reports of lower production. Global government bonds extended declines as France’s 10-year yield breached 1% for the first time in more than a year. Gold declined.