A Fast Thousand Points on the Dow Just Isn’t What It Used to Be

(Bloomberg) -- As it stands, the Donald Trump bull market has a shot at knocking off a dot com-era record pertaining to how fast the Dow Jones Industrial Average travels 1,000 points to a round-number milestone. But don’t be fooled, the rally remains a pipsqueak compared with past bouts of euphoria.

Consider the daily pace of gains. The Dow has risen an average of 0.18 percent a session over the past two weeks, about two-thirds the rate between March and May in 1999, when it went from 10,000 to 11,000 in a little over a month, data compiled by Bloomberg and S&P Dow Jones Indices show.

It’s not that the Trump rally isn’t impressive -- at the moment it’s the fastest for any new president since Ronald Reagan. It’s just that going by history, it’s nothing huge.

• It took the index almost 5,200 days to go from 1,000 to 2,000 between 1972 and 1987.
• Since the Dow passed it’s first 1,000-point threshold of the bull market -- in May 2013 when it passed 15,000 -- the average time it’s taken to the next 1,000 has been 324 days.
• Dow crossed 10,000 for the first time in March 1999.
• The hit 11,000 in May 1999, then advanced another 708 points before peaking in January 2000.

For more stories on Trump rally:
Trump Bull Market Bounty Tops $1 Trillion as Bear Case Mutes (1)
Trump Win Set Off $2 Trillion Shock Rotation to Stocks From Debt

To contact the reporter on this story: Lu Wang in New York at lwang8@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Arie Shapira at ashapira3@bloomberg.net, Jeremy Herron