Happy days are here again for the stock market.
The Dow and S&P 500 both closed at record highs Monday and the tech-heavy Nasdaq hit its highest level since the peak of the dot-com boom in March 2000.
The S&P 500 is now up 10.3% for the year, and the Dow is up 6.3%. Those are very healthy returns, especially given that most investment firms consider an 8% annual return to be the historic average.
It was a steady-as-she-goes kind of day on Wall Street. There wasn’t a clear catalyst sending the markets higher, other than oil prices continuing to stay under $80 a barrel and a calm confidence about geopolitics.
Transportation stocks had a particularly good day with Alaska Air, FedEx, UPS and Union Pacific hitting all-time highs, likely as a result of low oil prices and indications of solid demand heading into the holiday season.
Perhaps even more importantly, volatility in the markets is back to incredible lows. The VIX volatility index, which spiked to touch 30 during the worst of this year’s market bobble, is now below 13. Its average since January 1990 is around 20.
CNNMoney’s Fear & Greed Index is back in “Greed” mode — an extreme rebound from the “Extreme Fear” it showed a month ago.
Today marked the 23rd record close this year for the Dow and the 39th for the S&P 500.
The only woes on Wall Street Monday were for cable companies. Time Warner Cable fell 5% and Comcast slid 4% after President Obama came out strong saying there should be no Internet “fast lanes” that give priority to some customers over others. It’s a hotly debated issue that may make it more difficult for Internet providers.
