(Updated, 4:08 p.m.)
NEW YORK – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 10,000 points for the first time in more than a year on Wednesday as earnings at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. beat analysts’ forecasts and buoyed U.S. stocks.
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The Dow first breached the psychologically-significant milestone briefly at 1:21 p.m., reaching 10,001.58, before falling during the afternoon. A late rally pushed the average up 147.30 points, or 1.5 percent, to close at 10,018.36.
It marked the first time the Dow topped 10,000 since Oct. 7, 2008, in the worst days of the financial crisis. The 30-stock average hit a 12-year low of 6,547.05 on March 9 and has climbed by nearly 3,500 points since then.
“It’s still going to be a volatile market but we think it’s sustainable and that we’re on track to go up from here,” Peter Sorrentino, who helps oversee $13.8 billion at Huntington Asset Management in Cincinnati, told Bloomberg News. “It’s an important psychological level that’s more an indication of the mom and pop money coming back into the market.”
The market gains erase about half the stock gauge’s losses since it hit a record high of 14,164.53 in October 2007, which capped a 94 percent increase in five years, according to Bloomberg.
“Intel and JPMorgan are two major bellwethers, so if the most significant semiconductor company and the most significant bank are blowing out their numbers and guiding higher, that has a positive implication for the entire economy,” Philip Orlando, who helps oversee $400 billion as chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors Inc. in New York, told the news service.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased 1.8 pecent to close at 1,092.06 in New York. The S&P 500 has climbed 60 percent since hitting a 12-year low in March, and is now 14 percent below its level on the day before Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy in September 2008.
The Dow, which is made up of 30 companies chosen by The Wall Street Journal’s editors, closed above 10,000 for the first time on March 29, 1999. After falling during the dot-com bust, the average closed above 10,000 every day from October 2004 to October 2008.
