Wall Street seems super-excited as the Dow reclaimed 28,000 last week while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq hit highs at regular intervals. In fact, the Dow Jones industrial average — the laggard in the trio — turned positive for 2020 on Aug 28, having gained about 0.6%. The blue-chip 30-stock index added about 2.6% last week. For the year, the index is now up about 0.6% versus 8.6% gains in the S&P 500 and a jump of 30.4% in the Nasdaq.

What Led to the Rally?

Fed to Keep Rates Lower for Longer

On Aug 27, the Federal Reserve announced a new strategy to bring back the United States to full employment level and drive inflation back to healthier levels. Under the new scheme, the U.S. central bank will seek to achieve inflation averaging 2% over time, counterbalancing below-2% periods with higher inflation "for some time."

The change in the Fed’s tone suggests the its key overnight interest rate, already at rock-bottom levels, will remain so in the medium term as the central bank is striving to drive inflation. Since a low-rate environment is great for stocks, large-cap indexes rallied (read: Fed Targets "Average Inflation" of 2%: ETF Strategies to Play).

Upbeat Economic Datapoints

A slew of upbeat economic datapoints also helped the Dow Jones rally.  U.S. consumer spending rose 1.9% in July, beating a Reuters forecast of a 1.5% gain, the Commerce Department said. Personal income was also stronger than expected, rising 0.4% while economists had forecast a decline of 0.2%.

Oil Rally

Furthermore, it has been noticed lately that the Dow Jones shares a deep relationship with oil price movement. Though the energy sector rally spreads optimism over the broader market as a whole, in most cases, on a particular day of oil surge, the rise in the Dow Jones is steeper than that of the S&P 500, or vice versa. Last week, WTI crude fund United States Oil Fund, LP USO added about 1.2%.

Focus on Blue-Chip Stocks

The Dow Jones assigns greater weight to higher-priced stocks, which is one of the reasons behind the recent surge. Overall, blue-chip stocks are performing exceptionally of late.

Stocks That Took the Dow Jones to New Height

Against the aforementioned backdrop, below we highlight a few stocks that helped the Dow Jones to turn positive in 2020.

Visa (V Quick QuoteV - Free Report) ): Weight in Dow (5.08%), Stock Up 2.22% on Aug 28

McDonald's Corp (MCD Quick QuoteMCD - Free Report) ): Weight in Dow (5.11%), Stock Up 1.28% on Aug 28

Microsoft (MSFT Quick QuoteMSFT - Free Report) ): Weight in Dow (5.45%), Stock Up 1.03% on Aug 28

Walmart (WMT Quick QuoteWMT - Free Report) ): Weight in Dow (3.29%), Stock Up 2.69% on Aug 28

Disney (DIS): Weight in Dow (3.22%), Stock Up 1.35% on Aug 28

The Coca-Cola Company (KO Quick QuoteKO - Free Report) ): Weight in Dow (1.16%), Stock Up 3.32% on Aug 28

Intel (INTC Quick QuoteINTC - Free Report) : Weight in Dow (1.19%), Stock Up 2.09% on Aug 28

ETFs in Focus

Investors seekinga momentum play, can also bet on SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA Quick QuoteDIA - Free Report) (a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), Guggenheim Dow Jones Industrial Average Dividend ETF (DJD Quick QuoteDJD - Free Report) ) and iShares Dow Jones US ETF (IYY Quick QuoteIYY - Free Report) (a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy)). Investors can also settle for leveraged Dow ETF plays as long as the trend favors them. Here, ProShares Ultra Dow30 (DDM Quick QuoteDDM - Free Report) ) and ProShares UltraPro Dow30 (UDOW Quick QuoteUDOW - Free Report) ) are a couple of choices (see all leveraged equity ETFs here).

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