NEW YORK — It came and went in a flash each time, a number on a board for mere seconds, but its symbolic power couldn’t be dismissed.
The Dow Jones industrial average, powered higher all year by optimism that the economic recovery is finally for real, crossed 13,000 Tuesday for the first time since May 2008.
The last time the Dow was there, unemployment was 5.4 percent and Lehman Brothers was a solvent investment bank. Financial crises happened in other countries, or the history books.
The milestone Tuesday came about two hours into the trading day. The Dow was above 13,000 for about 30 seconds, and for slightly longer at about noon and 1:30 p.m., but couldn’t hold its gains. It finished up 15.82 points at 12,965.69.
Still, Wall Street took note of the marker.
It was just last summer that the Dow unburdened itself of 2,000 points in three weeks. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating, Washington was fighting over the federal borrowing limit, and the European debt crisis was raging.
A second recession in the U.S. was a real fear. But the economy grew faster every quarter last year, and gains in the job market have been impressive, including 243,000 jobs added in January.
“Essentially over the last couple of months, you’ve taken the two biggest fears off the table: that Europe is going to melt down and that we’re going to have another recession here,” said Scott Brown, chief economist for Raymond James.
The tumult of last summer and fall left the Dow as low as 10,655. It closed Tuesday 22 percent above that low. The Dow is 1,199 points from an all-time high, a 9 percent rally from here.
A long-awaited bailout to help Greece prevent a potentially catastrophic default, announced before dawn in Europe, helped the Dow clear 13,000.
Greece will get more than $170 billion, from other European nations and the International Monetary Fund. In a separate deal, investors in Greek bonds will be asked to forgive $141 billion in debt.
After months in which talks crawled along and vague headlines yanked the market up and down, the conclusion was almost anticlimactic because the markets were already expecting an agreement.
The price of oil settled at $105.84, up $3.53 for the day. The price jumped more than $1 in about 20 minutes after Iran’s foreign-ministry spokesman told reporters that a U.N. team visiting Iran has no plans to inspect the country’s nuclear facilities and will only hold talks with Iranian officials.
“That was the olive branch the market was holding on to,” said Phil Flynn, analyst for the brokerage PFGBest. “If they’re not going to discuss the nuclear program, then we’re a lot closer to a conflict than further away.”
