The financial press loves milestones, as they offer something to report about, something to watch, opine about and celebrate. Investors love these milestones as well, with market sentiment seemingly reacting to these round numbers in various indexes (and their ETFs, such as the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) and the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY)) and other stock market indicators. In our opinion these "round number" targets are completely meaningless and should be ignored.
I am reminded of a line in the 1999 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "End of Days," when the anti-Christ is apparently going to bring on the end of the world by midnight. Schwarzenegger's character absurdly asks if this is supposed to occur on "Eastern Standard Time," as if our human invented time keeping system suddenly has cosmic significance. After all, our year 2017 is simply a human created construct and is only relevant because… Read More …