"The Dow Jones industrial average... rose more than 120 points in morning trading on Tuesday, surpassing its previous record close..."

"... of 14,164.53, which it achieved nearly five and a half years ago, as well as its record intraday high, set around the same time, of 14,198.10."

“Central banks do matter. Central banks have always mattered,” said David Rosenberg, a chief economist at Gluskin Sheff and Associates, who started work as a Wall Street economist on the day of the 1987 stock market crash. “So long as the Fed is in an accommodative mode and the economy is out of recession, the odds are that you will have a bull market.”

That’s not to say that the Fed’s largess is the only reason stocks are up. Company profits, which theoretically provide the basis for investing in stocks, have also surged. “Corporate earnings have been doing very nicely, thank you,” said Alan S. Blinder, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. In aggregate, companies in the S.&P. 500 have not reported a decline in earnings since the third quarter of 2009.