Today’s trading took the Dow Jones Industrial Average past the 12,500 mark. There’s nothing significant about this fact other than the fact that our society uses base-10 numbers and we add significance to round numbers that are divisible by 10 or 100.

That aside, the ascent of the Dow since mid-July is quite breathtaking… nearly a 15% rise since the low point of the year with nary a dip along the rise. There’s not much to add that we haven’t said before, but I figured I’d say it again as we go into the last two days of 2006.

The start of January should be interesting as it is the end of “tax-loss-selling” season and we will see if market participants are eager to buy in the new year or if the enthusiasm is lacking…