NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The Dow industrials could punch through 17,000 and keep climbing.
Or the blue-chip benchmark might hit that milestone level, then struggle to break through and end up tumbling.
Another possibility is that big round numbers like 17,000 are meaningless, but plenty of experts say they actually do matter to the U.S. stock market. And this record level might even be bullish.
Terrance Odean, a finance professor at the University of California at Berkeley, anticipates the Dow reaching 17,000 will spur more buying.
“I expect that the biggest effect of hitting 17,000 is that the event gets news coverage and, in the process, reminds (or informs) investors that the market has been going up,” Odean told MarketWatch in an email. “While this could prompt some people to sell, I’d expect it to trigger more buying than selling.”