Stock Markets Rally, Bringing Dow, Nasdaq To Highest Levels In Years
'The Dow Jones industrial average closed Friday at 12,862.23, jumping 156.82 points to its highest close since May 2008, back when Lehman Brothers was still a going concern.
The Nasdaq composite index jumped 1.65 percent to 2905.66, its highest close since December 2000 -- that's almost within shouting distance of the peak of the tech-stock bubble.
The broader S&P 500 index, which probably makes up the biggest chunk of the average person's 401(k), jumped 1.5 percent to 1,344.90, but has no sexy historical comparison to brag about. It's still a little lower than it was last July.
Nevertheless, this is a big rally, resulting a 16 percent rise of the S&P since Thanksgiving, and it has been driven largely by better-than-expected economic data, the biggest of which was this morning's jobs report for January.
[/I][/B]
"The U.S. economy added 243,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate has fallen to 8.3 percent, according to the latest jobs report from the Labor Department. The numbers mark the fifth straight month that unemployment has dropped.
Analyst expectations ranged from high 100,000s to low 200,000s, so the numbers exceed expectations.
White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Alan Krueger said the January jobs report provides further evidence that "the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression."
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, told MSNBC's Chuck Todd that the report is "unambiguously positive." Hourly earnings are increasing and it shows the economy is "definitively gaining traction," he said."
