Well, well, well. The Dow Jones just crossed 50,000 for the first time ever, and suddenly everyone on Wall Street is acting like they totally called it. Sure, Jan.
After what can only be described as a week from hell for tech stocks, Friday turned into one of those “buy the dip” bonanzas that makes you wonder if the market has collective amnesia. The Dow didn’t just tippy-toe over 50K—it bulldozed through with a 1,200-point rally that had traders doing victory laps around their Bloomberg terminals.
Here’s what actually happened: Tech stocks, which had been getting absolutely demolished all week, suddenly became everyone’s favorite again. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF—try saying that five times fast—jumped nearly 4%. Mind you, this thing is still down 30% from its peak, so we’re talking about a dead cat bounce that thinks it’s a trampoline.
The numbers that matter: The S&P 500 climbed 1.97% to 6,932, the Nasdaq shot up 2.18% to 23,031, and our star of the show, the Dow, gained 2.5% to close at 50,115. That’s not a typo—we’re officially in five-digit Dow territory, folks.
But wait, there’s more! Bitcoin, which had been flirting with $60,000 like a nervous teenager at prom, suddenly grew some confidence and surged 12%. Apparently, when everything else is on sale, crypto becomes the comfort food of the investment world.
The real winners of the day read like a who’s who of “stocks that got absolutely wrecked this week”: CoreWeave jumped 20%, Circle Internet Group climbed 14%, and even Nvidia—yes, the AI darling that everyone was ready to write off—bounced back 8%.
Paul Hickey from Bespoke Investment Group basically summed up the whole situation: people are buying the dip because, well, buying the dip has worked for the past 18 months. It’s like that friend who keeps using the same pickup line because it worked once in college.
Charles Schwab’s Joe Mazzola called it “a miserable week for tech” that was “mercifully approaching the finish line.” Translation: everyone was ready to pretend this week never happened and move on with their lives.
The thing is, this whole rally feels a bit like showing up to a party after the cops have already been called. Sure, the music’s playing again, but everyone’s still a little jumpy. Software stocks are still in bear market territory, Amazon’s earnings sent its stock tumbling despite the broader rally, and silver is doing that thing where it can’t decide if it wants to be a precious metal or a mood ring.
So here we are, celebrating the Dow’s 50K milestone while conveniently forgetting that just yesterday, everyone was convinced AI was going to destroy every software company on the planet. The market has the memory of a goldfish and the attention span of a TikTok user, which is probably why it works.
Will this rally stick? Will 50K become the new floor or just another number we’ll look back on fondly while crying into our portfolios? Nobody knows, but hey, at least we can say we were here when the Dow hit 50,000. That’s got to count for something, right?