Dow Touches New Intraday High, Finishes Lower

Merck (NYSE:MRK) , UnitedHealth (NYSE:UNH) , and Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) helped lift the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 26,000 on Tuesday, marking the fastest climb between 1,000-point barriers in the index’s 121-year history.

Gains from IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) also helped the Dow surge to 26,086 on Tuesday morning. The index ended up closing below the 26,000 threshold after early gains uncharacteristically sunk into the red in the afternoon. The Dow closed at 25,792.86, down 0.04% on the day.

Still, despite the small downturn on Tuesday, 2018 has already been a strong year for both the index and the broader markets. It took the Dow only seven days of trading to soar from 25,000 to 26,000. Year-to-date, the Dow has climbed 4.34%.

In fact, the Dow gained 507.3 points last week, marking the second week in a row that it gained more than 500 points. The last time the Dow experienced a run like this was March 2000.

Over the last 52 weeks, the Dow has skyrocketed more than 30%. Now, questions have started to fly about when this massive bull market might end. Some point to the length of the current bull market as sign enough that bear days are on the horizon.

On the other side of things, people point to the strength of technology firms such as Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) (APPL) and their ability to make more profits as reasons to be optimistic the run will continue.

Coupled with the recent GOP tax overhaul, which will see the corporate tax rate fall from 35% to 21%, investors hope the bull market still has legs.

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