What to watch

Dow among trio of stock indexes to hit highs

The stock market on Tuesday enjoyed Wall Street’s version of a triple play.

The Dow, which is made up of

30 brand-name U.S. companies, closed at a record high. So did the large-company Standard & Poor’s

500 stock index. The techpacked Nasdaq composite also closed at an all-time high, even though shares of Apple edged lower after the release of its iPhone X, its newest phone that lists for $999 and has facial recognition and wireless charging capabilities.

Investors keep pushing stocks higher despite all sorts of negatives swirling around, including a made-for-TV hurricane season, ongoing threats from North Korea and an overheated market that’s getting more overvalued relative to corporate earnings.

The bull storyline stresses the positives, such as three major indexes breaking out to new highs after stalling out most of August and the early days of September. The bulls’ main talking point is that pretty much the entire world is enjoying an economic rebound or expansion, a positive trend that occurs infrequently.

But market skeptics say stocks are too pricey and can’t keep going up forever. They point to the fact that the S&P 500 is within 4 points of hitting the 2500 level for the first time, a big number that could act as a new price ceiling. Another negative is the failure of the small-company Russell 2000 index, which is still 2% below its late-July peak, to join the new high party.