{UAH} WE ARE WITNESSING HISTORICAL NUMBERS FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN OUR LIVES

All three major stock indexes just hit all-time highs

By Kevin Dugan

November 21, 2017  

Modal Trigger

Getty Images

Don’t look down.

Wall Street’s three major stock indexes hit fresh all-time highs on Tuesday, buoyed by surprisingly strong housing sales and rosy predictions for the year ahead.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 160.5 points to 23,590.83, leaving it up more than 19 percent since the start of the year.

The S&P 500 Index, a broader gauge of US companies, rose to 2,599.03, after briefly breaking 2,600 during early afternoon trading. The Nasdaq, an index of largely tech companies, rose 1 percent to 6,862.48.

Stocks rose on the back of positive economic news, that sales of existing homes rose 2 percent, which was stronger than expected.

“It has been an eventful past couple months as the housing market has absorbed and bounced back from a string of deadly and destructive storms,” Svenja Gudell, chief economist at Zillow, said in a statement.

“Demand is high, inventory is low and nothing short of a dramatic shock — which nobody expects — seems likely to knock it off that track,” she added.

Among the biggest gainers were Apple, which rose 1.9 percent to $173.14, as retailers expect huge demand for the iPhone X for the Christmas shopping season, which begins Friday.

The days before Thanksgiving are typically a sleepy time for markets, since there is little new economic data that can move stocks one way or another.

However, it’s been a strong quarter for earnings, with large corporations reporting stronger profits than a year ago.

The last two days of gains come in contrast to two weeks of modest losses in the stock market — one of the longest down streaks in a year that’s broken records for all-time highs.

In wackier markets developments, bitcoin continued to surge past $8,000 on Tuesday, extending beyond its extraordinary 700 percent gain so far this year.

The rise came as bitcoin investor Mike Novogratz, a former Fortress Investment Group trader, predicted the cryptocurrency would rise to about $10,000 by the end of the year.

“Bitcoin is built on an amazing technology, there’s a limited supply of it,” Novogratz said on Bloomberg TV.

Bitcoin’s technology, however, isn’t limited, and users have found ways to expand how much of the digital currency is in circulation. Novogratz didn’t respond to a question via Twitter for comment.

 

 

EM

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"