90% stock market crash highly likely this year

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35. In the whole history of "the market", it first went above 1000 in 1972

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/14/dow-1000-and-wall-streets-watergate.aspx
Dow 1,000 and Wall Street's Watergate

By Alex Planes | More Articles
November 14, 2012 | Comments (0)

On this day in economic and financial history...

On its very first day in existence in 1896, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEX: ^DJI ) closed at 41 points. It had 12 components then, representing the pillars of the American economy: sugar, tobacco, rubber, leather, gas, lead, cattle feed, railroads, and electricity. It would take 76 years for the index to reach a four-digit closing price, which was finally achieved on Nov. 14, 1972.

"The long-sought goal of 1,000 on a closing basis carries a mystique all its own," wrote The New York Times when the Dow reached its milestone. "Brokers have hailed it as 'magical' and 'romantic,' ever hopeful of a favorable impact on investment sentiment once the mark was shattered."

Many of the Dow's three-digit milestones were also a long time coming after its founding, in no small part due to the horrific declines seen during the Great Depression. The index hit 100 points in 1906, 300 points in 1928, 500 in 1956, 700 in 1961, and 900 in 1965, according to the Times. The grueling climb to 1,000 was cut short by two bear markets in the latter half of the 1960s, which snatched victory from the jaws of a Dow that peaked at 995 points early in 1966.

Several bad choices hurt the Dow on its climb to 1,000. A four-decade exclusion of IBM (NYSE: IBM ) suppressed the Dow's growth significantly, as the company posted a staggering 22,000% return over the course of its non-index years, from 1939 to 1979. IBM's stock even tried to upstage the Dow on its milestone day, climbing 3% on strong forward guidance as the Dow eked out a modest half-percent gain. The Dow's inclusion of Anaconda Copper in 1959 is also perplexing, as copper mining suffered long-term weakness throughout the first half of the century (excepting the World War II period). Anaconda's flagship mine in Chile was confiscated by the Chilean Socialist government in 1971, and the company's stock lost 72% of its value from 1969 to mid-1972. Anaconda sold itself to an oil company less than five years later, and today it exists only as an environmental liability for BP (NYSE: BP ) , which acquired its acquirer.

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