Stock Market Today: Dow closes at record record high as post-Fed rally continues
Investing.com — The Dow closed at record highs Thursday for the second-straight day as the post-Fed rally continued to push stocks higher even as some express concern that the recent run higher has been too much, too fast.
By 16:00 ET (21:00 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 158 points, or 0.4%, to close at a record of 37,248.35. The S&P 500 index rose 0.4%, higher and the NASDAQ Composite climbed 0.2%.
The rally in the three key indexes including the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq breached technically «overbought» levels, or a level above 70 on the relative strength index, or RSI, a technical tool that indicates whether a security is overbought or oversold.
The earlier intraday surge in stocks came a day after the Federal Reserve forecast three rate hikes for next, with Fed chairman Jerome Powell announcing that it discussion of when to cut rates was now on the table.
Technicals aside, the rally has also cast a light on whether valuations have run up too far, too fast.
«It seems like stocks are just a little bit overheated at this point in time,» Brian Mulberry at Zacks Investment Management said in an interview with Investing.com's Yasin Ebrahim.
«Next year, we are expecting earnings on the S&P 500 to grow to $240 a share, but we're already enjoying the valuation of that earnings growth today,» Mulberry added. «It's hard to say even if we get the 10% earnings growth that we're expecting from the S&P 500, that we're going to have a valuation 10% higher from where we are now… that doesn't make sense at this point in time.»
Initial jobless claims dropped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 202,000 for the week ended Dec. 9, but while that was short of economists estimates, some continue to see a material weakening ahead.
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