What's going on?

This is no small thing: the Dow Jones Industrial Average index hit an all-time high this week.

What does this mean?

The Dow is one of the most important US stock indexes, but it�s a slightly different beast than, say, the S&P 500. For starters, its value is determined by its constituent companies� share prices, rather than their market capitalizations. In other words, higher-priced stocks have more of an influence than their lower-priced rivals. Secondly, it tracks the value of far fewer companies: 30 to the S&P�s 500. And since they�re a cross-section of American industry as a whole, they benefited from the news that the presidential transition is now officially underway. That led to a surge in their share prices, tipping the Dow over the 30,000 mark for the first time ever.

Why should I care?

For markets: Rotation, rotation, rotation.�

The prospect of an end to the pandemic has analysts tripping over each other to tell you how to set up your portfolio for maximum gains. They don�t necessarily agree how to do it, but they do agree on one thing: it�s time to ditch the stocks that did well in 2020 and rotate to something new. As for what that �something new� is: plenty of them are backing cheap-looking value and economically sensitive cyclical shares, which have been gradually catching up with the Big Tech stocks that led the rally earlier this year.

The bigger picture: No rest for the wicked.�

There�s an old truism that investors trade less in the lead-up to Thanksgiving, making markets more vulnerable to sudden shifts. But 2020 has no time for your truisms: investors who wanted a piece of the rally traded 75% more shares on the Monday and Tuesday than they did the same time last year (tweet this). Looks like it might�ve taken some trading platforms by surprise too: both Vanguard and Merrill Lynch reported platform outages on Wednesday.