The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 20,000 mark for the first time in history today. The Dow is one of several stock market indices and tracks only 30 companies. While crossing the 20K mark is significant, it is purely a psychological construct. No one gets any extra money just because the Dow hit that number. It does signal the US stock market is currently doing relatively well.
From a personal point of view, however, I wonder if this is a perfect time to sell most if not all my stock and mutual fund holdings and move them to safe havens. The mantra of selling high always rings true. The reason for this move is that there is clearly continued turmoil coming from the new Trump regime in the US. Every new pronouncement from the White House seems more ridiculous than the last. So far, none of these have seemed to negatively effect the US economy but it’s not difficult to see where one or two policy changes could cause problems. Remember that the last global recession of 2008 was built up and happened during the watch of the last Republican president.
I think back to the last part of the year where the seemingly impossible turned into reality quite easily. As of this moment, a global recession seems like an unreasonable prediction but we live in unprecedented (notice the correct grammar) times, where anything can (and unfortunately does) happen.