The Dow Jones Industrial Average or DOW is a stock market index thatmeasures the stock performance of 30 large companies listed on the US stockexchange. On the day, DOW jumped 464 points, or 1.5%, passing the 32,000 levelfor the first time ever. The S&P 500 rose 0.6%, and the Nasdaq Compositewas essentially flat, a positive sign given the recent volatility for techstocks.

TheDow's 1000-point milestones don't mean all that much these days. Going from31,000 to 32,000, after all, is a mere 3.2% gain. Not quite the 25% gainrequired for the Dow to break 5,000 back in November 1995.

And yetround numbers are always a good time to step back and ask how we got here. Thelatest 1,000-point add took 42 days; it took 29 days to go from 30k to 31k, alevel we reached in early January.

For allthe attention on tech stocks, investors actually have financials andindustrials to thank for the latest celebration. Goldman Sachs was the biggestcontributor to the Dow's pricing formula, responsible for 331 points of itslatest 1,000-point gain. Boeing was second, with 215 points, and Caterpillar wasthird, with 177 points.

Applewas actually a drag on the latest performance, subtracting 72 points from theDow's performance. Same for IBM (-7 points) and cloud giant Salesforce.com (-40points), the Dow's newest entrant.