Flashback on Dow 1000

I ran across this headline from November 23 1980: Prime rate at 17 percent, Dow passes 1000.

At that point, it had been almost eight years between the time the Dow first passed 1,000 — in November 1972 — and would be another two years before the Dow would cross the 1,000 threshold for good.

That meant between 1966 and 1982 there was a lengthy period of sideways trading. Funny, we had a ‘war’ that wasn’t a war and an oil shock going on in that period, as well. The past is never the same as the future — Dow 1,000 is probably not in my future — but it sometimes provides parallels. I would speculate that we won’t see Dow 14,000 again for long enough to make my IRA next to irrelevant. Though to some degree, that depends on how far below 10,000 the Dow goes.