Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on May 16, 2024.
Passing major milestones like the 40,000 barrier the Dow Jones Industrial Average eclipsed this week makes for a nice headline, but market experts don't take much else from the move.
Forty thousand "is a great milestone, but [at the] end of the day there isn't much difference between 39,999 and 40k," said Ryan Detrick, chief market market strategist at Carson Group.
But the "Waiting for Godot" economic retrenchment never happened, despite wobbly corporate profits and other headwinds.
Those factors outweighed queasiness over where the Federal Reserve was headed with monetary policy amid inflation that has proved surprisingly sticky.
Persons:
Ryan Detrick
Organizations:
New York Stock Exchange, Dow Jones, Carson Group, Wall Street, Federal