The Dow Jones industrial average crossed the 20,000 mark for the first time Wednesday, the latest milestone in a record-setting drive for the stock market.
Strong earnings from Boeing and other big companies helped push the Dow past the threshold. U.S. stocks closed solidly higher, lifting the Standard & Poor's 500 index and Nasdaq composite to record highs of their own for the second day in a row.
The Dow, which tracks 30 major industrial companies, gained 155.80 points, or 0.8 percent, to 20,068.51. The S&P 500 index rose 18.30 points, or 0.8 percent, to 2,298.37. The Nasdaq added 55.38 points, or 1 percent, to 5,656.34.
Small-company stocks also rose. The Russell 2000 picked up 13.23 points, or 1 percent, to 1,382.44.
[INTERACTIVE TIMELINE: Key Dow milestones since 1999]
The market is now in the second-longest bull run since World War II, following the rally of 1990-2002.
"It's a psychological event to get through that big hurdle, that big round number," said Jeff Kravetz, regional investment strategist at U.S. Bank's Private Client Reserve. "It's really symbolic of what's going on with investor sentiment becoming much more positive, and that's going to drive stock prices higher."
The market has been marching steadily higher since bottoming out at 6,709.61 on March 9, 2009, in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
The latest 1,000-point surge in the Dow was the second-fastest ever. Led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., almost $2 trillion has been added to U.S. equities in fewer than 90 days.
"It blows me away," said Jim Paulsen, chief market strategist at Wells Fargo Asset Management. "I can remember when people wondered if we would ever get through Dow 1,000. It's amazing -- we are up 20-fold in my career."
And that is a big deal, Paulsen said, because it means that for all the worry and doubts that have sprung from the market collapses in 1987, 2000 and 2008, if investors just held to a core portfolio of large American stocks they would have done pretty well.
Wednesday's rally came against a backdrop of optimism on Wall Street that executive actions and policy goals announced by President Donald Trump's administration this week on trade, manufacturing and business deregulation will be good for corporate America. The Dow has advanced 11 percent since just before Trump's election, at times posting the fastest rally for a new president since 1900.
"Whether it's tax reform or infrastructure spending, any of those tend to be optimistic conversations for the markets currently," said Darrell Cronk, president of Wells Fargo Investment Institute. "We have to wait and see how they play out, obviously. The danger here, if there is one, is that the market gets ahead of itself a little bit."
Most professional investors are skeptical that the Dow at 20,000 will have much effect on the market. They more often look to the S&P 500 index as a benchmark because they consider it better representation of the broad market.
"In and of itself, it is just a number," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. "But what it does is it lifts market expectations, in essence, to continue moving higher."
If the Dow reaching 20,000 has any impact, it likely will be a psychological one. Investors have been leery of the stock market for years, unable to stomach the prospect of losing more than 50 percent of their money for a second time if another financial crisis hits.
That trepidation has caused them to pull money out of stock funds -- even as the Dow made its march toward 20,000 -- and depend instead on safer bond investments.
Last year, investors pulled a net $27.1 billion out of U.S. stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, according to Morningstar. A year earlier, they pulled $66.5 billion. Over the same time, investors plugged $218.6 billion into taxable bond funds.
Anyone who resisted the urge to dump their stock investments through all the tumult of the past decade is now seeing the full benefit of a market with the Dow at 20,000.
A $10,000 investment in the largest U.S. stock mutual fund made a decade ago, before the recession began, would have dropped below $5,000 by March 2009. But investors who held on even through the worries of another recession, the U.S. debt downgrade, the euro crisis and uncertainties over Britain's departure from the European Union would now be sitting on nearly $20,000.
This is expected to be the busiest week for corporate earnings news, with about 30 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 reporting quarterly results.
Several companies' stock rose on results that exceeded Wall Street's expectations.
Boeing was the biggest gainer in the Dow. The aircraft manufacturer's shares climbed $6.81, or 4.2 percent, to $167.36.
Seagate's latest quarterly snapshot drove its shares 14 percent higher, to lead all other companies in the S&P 500. The stock added $5.23 to $42.67.
Investors also bid up shares in Rockwell Automation, which rose $10.98, or 7.7 percent, to $153.01, and Logitech, which vaulted 15.5 percent. The computer gaming and accessories maker's shares added $3.90 to $29.
Some companies posted earnings that failed to impress investors.
Textron slumped 5.4 percent after the defense contractor's fourth-quarter revenue missed financial analysts' estimates. The company also announced that it is buying snowmobile maker Arctic Cat in a deal valued at about $247 million. Textron was the biggest decliner in the S&P 500, sliding $2.65 to $46.73.
Major stock indexes in Europe moved higher.
Germany's DAX rose 1.8 percent, while the CAC-40 in France gained 1 percent. The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 index of leading British shares rose 0.2 percent.
Earlier in Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 surged 1.4 percent after Japan's government said the nation had a trade surplus in 2016, its first in six years. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.4 percent. South Korea's Kospi rose 0.1 percent.
Energy prices mostly declined. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 43 cents to $52.75 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, slid 36 cents at $55.08 a barrel in London.
Bond prices fell. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 2.52 percent from 2.47 percent late Tuesday.
Information for this article was contributed by Alex Veiga and Stan Choe of The Associated Press; by Lu Wang and Joseph Ciolli of Bloomberg News; and by Landon Thomas Jr. of The New York Times.
A Section on 01/26/2017