The Dow Jones Industrial Average just closed at its highest level in history.
Think about that for a second. This is an index that dates back to May 26, 1896. And of all the trading days since then, yesterday was the highest it’s ever finished.
As Ralph Acampora used to say, “Don’t fight Papa Dow!”
I can still hear him yelling it at me. And for good reason — I used to fight Papa Dow all the time in my younger days.
Back then, I thought I was so cool. Institutions benchmark to the S&P 500, so I felt I was above the Dow, which was just for retail investors who didn’t know any better.
What an idiot I was.
It was the Dow all along. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is the world’s most important stock market index.
Once I finally understood that, everything else started to click.
New All-Time Highs
Here’s a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing on Tuesday at the highest level in its nearly 130-year history:
The Dow corrected in the spring, and I remember all summer long hearing the same chorus on repeat:
“Stocks are too high, JC.”
“Valuations are silly.”
“There are signs of a top everywhere.”
“It’s all just grift and kids gambling.”
Meanwhile, the Dow hadn’t even made a new all-time high yet in 2025.
That didn’t come until late August.
All those people insisting stocks couldn’t go any higher chose to ignore what the Dow itself was doing.
They were fighting Papa Dow – because the truth didn’t fit their narrative.
These poor folks weren’t privileged enough to have Ralph Acampora, the Godfather of Technical Analysis, yelling at them about it 20 years ago.
I always wondered why he was so passionate about it.
Now I get it.
So I’m passing it along. I hope you’re listening – and watching this play out in real time.
Dow 30 > S&P 500
This week we’ve done a little counting together. (See They’re All Laughing At Me, It’s a Bull Market, Let’s Count, and It Can’t Be 7 Stocks If It’s 150.)
All of it was meant to push back on the nonsense about “weakening breadth.”
I’m no math major, but I do know this: It’s mathematically impossible for market breadth to be deteriorating if it’s literally expanding.
It can’t be hot and cold at the same time. Pick one.
And since I actually bother to count, I already knew which one it was.
Now, speaking of counting, a lot of people love to complain about the Dow because it’s a price-weighted index, meaning the higher the price of a stock, the more influence it has. Plus it “only” has 30 stocks.
The S&P 500, on the other hand, is market-cap weighted, with about 500 stocks. The bigger the company, the more it matters in the index.
That difference is why so many people (my younger self included) think they’re being sophisticated by focusing on the S&P 500 – without ever doing the math.
Here’s what the two indexes look like overlaid:
If I swapped the colors, most people couldn’t even tell which one was which. That’s how closely they move.
So here’s my question:
If getting the direction of the index right means getting the market right – and the index is just the sum of its parts – do you want to go through 500 stocks… or 30?
Same answer. One’s just simpler.
That’s why we count the Dow.
That’s why we respect the Dow.
And that’s why we don’t fight Papa Dow.
Because Papa’s still running the show. And he just set a new record doing it.
Now go call your S&P friends and tell them Papa Dow said “hi.”
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs