Do you think there is economic significance because the Dow Jones industrial average passed 13,000 for the first time since May 2008?

I don't place a direct relationship between the stock market and the economy. The DOW is only a compilation of 30 stocks, comprised of some of the largest companies from a variety of industries. However, when stocks are trending upward over a period of time, it does reflect some confidence in the economy and its short term future. It's a good sign that the DOW has passed the 13,000 level. Even more impressive, is that the DOW has almost doubled in less than 3 years.

In fact, all the indexes are up, significantly, which reflects a gain in small and medium sized companies as well. The Nasdaq has doubled in less than 3 years. The most significant factor in the current economy appears to be energy costs.

just means wall street is finding other ways to do their sketchy business as usual...

I watched a couple of shows over the past week and they were talking about this. It was indicated that while the number's are up (number of shares traded) that they were misleading because they represented less of a financial gain. There are a few companies that are performing well and showing significant increases in price per share. Everything else they said is people buying and selling for less of a profit due to volatility. In other words it's better to make .75 cents a share by selling now than taking the risk of losing .75 cents a share by holding it. Simply stated they claimed that trading today represented less in actual dollars than it did 2 years ago at lower levels. I dont know enough about stocks to know whether this is an accurate assessment or not so I am not stating this as truth......just thought it was interesting.

For China .