It’s the running of the bulls — again.
The Dow Jones industrial index is having its biggest rip-roaring ascent in decades — an upside propelling it to record 2013 highs, according to market pros.
One vet on the New York Stock Exchange floor last week saw the Dow being catapulted well above its record close set in October 2007. It reached 14,164 back then.
By year-end the bulls will take the Dow past 15,000 and, hey, possibly to 16,000, says veteran Big Board floor trader Peter Doyle.
“There is an underlying feeling that things are not as devastating as they had been,” he said.
Doyle is not alone in this optimism. “It looks like equities have recovered,” said Kevin Connellan, director of equity trading at Northern Trust. “It’s a steady climb. Where else will investors put their money?”
That view has gained plenty of currency lately. The Dow has had its best January in some two decades. And the bull run is gaining steam — despite warnings from bears on the sidelines. On Tuesday, for example, the Dow tantalizingly closed within 1 percent of its record 2007 high.
“We are pretty bullish,” Savita Subramanian, US equity and quant strategist at Merrill Lynch, told The Post. “We’ve set a year-end price target of 1,600 for the S&P 500.”
Some fundamentals driving the Dow’s climb:
* Successive rounds of Fed quantitative easing
* Fiscal cliff averted
* Meek monthly US jobs gains of 150,000
* More merger activity
Last year, US equity fund withdrawals were the worst since 2008, according to consultancy firm TABB Group. Daily volume averaged about 6.4 billion shares traded last year, down from nearly 10 billion in 2009, studies show.
Of course, equities have been here before. The Dow has tested new highs for the past two years. About 12 months ago, for example, US stocks surged on positive economic data. That took the Dow past 14,000. Then it retreated as quickly as it rose.
“That’s likely to happen again, to be honest with you,” said a bearish Joseph Cangemi of financial technology firm ConvergEx Group. “I would say the majority of the volume actually taking place, especially in these periods of low volatility, is basically electronic market makers trading against each other.”
It’s just a lot of “noise,” says Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading, criticizing the hordes of high-frequency traders playing the market. “Retail investors still don’t trust this market,” he added.
Saluzzi is a huge skeptic. “It’s the old adage: The market takes the stairs up and the elevator down,” he said. “I think that’s going to happen on this one. The easiest thing is for it to go higher, until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it will be ugly — and everybody will shake their heads.”