DOW’S RIDING HIGH

First 23,000+ close

On Wall Street, the good times continue to roll.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 23,000 for the first time Wednesday, boosted by continued optimism over President Trump’s plans to slash taxes and regulations.

Strong earnings from IBM helped drive the Dow’s historic close at 23,157.60, up 160.16 points from Tuesday, when the blue-chip barometer posted its first intra-day trade above the 23,000 mark — before closing below the plateau.

The Dow is up 17.2 percent this year through Wednesday, thanks in part to solid, steady growth in corporate profits as well as ebullience over President Trump’s pro-business platform.

“Retail investors continue to pour into the marketplace, and with each headline about a new record, and especially round numbers like that, people tend to feel like they’re missing out and you kind of suck more people into the market,” Ian Winer, head of equities at Wedbush Securities, told Reuters.

IBM shares gained 8.9 percent, ending the day at $159.53 after the tech giant disclosed it benefited from the US dollar falling against the euro.

Dow 23,000 is the fifth time the index closed above a fresh thousand-point threshold since Trump was elected on Nov. 8. It took only 53 trading days to advance the last 1,000point range.

With so many thousand-point milestones for the Dow in less than a year, the bar has been raised for the next truly historic moment.

“23,000 is not the number you watch, it’s 25,000,” Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Baird, told The Post Tuesday after the Dow briefly hit 23,000.

Indeed, while each 1,000point plateau builds excitement, each successive one becomes less noteworthy, statistically speaking.

The latest milestone represents a 4.5 percent gain. The 1,000-point march to 22,000 was a gain of 4.8 percent.

For example, the 24 trading days it took for the Dow to surge from 10,000 to 11,000 in May 1999 — a 10 percent move — was much more noteworthy than the 24 days it took the index to move from 20,000 to 21,000, a move of just 5 percent.

While both took 24 days, the climb to Dow 11,000 came in average daily gains of 41.7 basis points, or hundredths of a percent.

The 1,000-point climb to 21,000 came in average daily gains of 20.8 basis points.

By this measure, the Dow’s march to 23,000 from 22,000, which began Aug. 2, ranks ninth out of the 22 thousand-point milestones in terms of velocity.

During the last 1,000-point climb, the Dow rose an average of 8.6 basis points a day over the 53 trading days.

Other indexes ended Wednesday in the green. The S&P 500 closed at 2,561.26 and the Nasdaq at 6,624.22 after each touched record highs earlier in the session.