Dow Jones surpasses 22,000 with boost from Apple

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 22,000 Wednesday, setting a record high in what has become one of its longest bull markets in history.

Apple Inc. made its biggest jump in six months Wednesday, climbing to its all-time high, and helping send the Dow Jones industrial average higher. Apple’s strong sales forecast suggests it’s confident the next iPhone will reach the market on time.

Much of the rest of the market was mixed, however, and most of the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange fell.

The Dow average rose 52.32 points, or 0.2 percent, to 22,016.24. Apple was responsible for 48 of those points.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a broader market measure used by most professional investors, added 1.22 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 2,477.57.

The S&P 500 “is a better indicator of market performance than the Dow,” said Mitchell Goldberg, president, ClientFirst Strategy Inc. in Melville.

SEE PHOTOSSee who got hired, promoted on LI

The extraordinary rise of the stock markets since early 2009 — when the market bottomed out March 9 at 6,547.05 — has greatly fattened the portfolios of U.S. investors. And it has boosted the political fortunes of President Donald Trump, who yesterday once again took credit for the markets’ performance.

The persistent gains this year have come courtesy of robust profits at big companies, low interest rates and a rare alignment of developed economies in good or improving health. Those have been more powerful forces on stocks than world events such as North Korean nuclear missile tests, Venezuela’s meltdown, or legislative gridlock in Washington.

Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research called the most recent surge in stocks a “summertime lullaby” in a recent blog post.

“For stock investors, the living has been relatively easy since March 2009, when this great bull market started,” he said.

“Now it seems that we are all getting lulled to sleep by the monotonous advance of stock prices,” Yardeni wrote. “They just keep heading to new record highs with less and less volatility.”

With Carrie Mason-Draffen