So many historical events — good and bad — have happened this year.

One of the more recent events is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a measure of 30 blue-chip stocks across a range of industries, closing above 30,000 for the first time ever.

To gain some perspective, let’s review the benchmarks reached by this index over time.

The Dow was started in 1896 with 12 stocks — none of which are part of the index today — at an initial price of 40.94. Seventy-six years after its creation, the Dow first closed above 1,000 on Nov. 14, 1972.

Almost 27 years later, the Dow closed above 10,000 for the first time on March 29,1999. A little less than 18 years later, it hit another milestone when it closed above 20,000 on Jan. 25, 2017.

On Nov. 24, it closed above the latest milestone of 30,000, less than four years since its last milestone.

Whether you find cause to celebrate this new milestone depends on your viewpoint.

The Dow’s climb to 30,000 was boosted by the Federal Reserve slashing short-term interest rates to near 0% along with the measures authorized by Congress to provide trillions of dollars of financial aid in an attempt to stabilize the economy and financial markets.

It can be argued that this effort has been effective since the economy has improved since the pandemic’s initial shock. New unemployment claims dropped from 6.9 million in March to 778,000 in November.

Company profits didn’t tank as much as initially feared, and the possibility that a COVID vaccine could begin distribution by the end of the year recently has given the market more reason to be optimistic.

At the same time, with the 10-year Treasury yield running well below 1%, investors are generally more attracted to the returns of the stock market over returns offered by interest-bearing instruments.

Investors tend to respond when benchmarks cross a big number into record territory, even though those big numbers only tell how far you’ve come, not how far you’re going or the likelihood of reaching your personal financial goals.

For example, do you need your portfolio to double in the next decade as you prepare for retirement? Using the Rule of 72, an 8% annual return on your portfolio would double your investment value in roughly nine years.

If the Dow’s progress roughly represents your move toward that goal, then you would like to see Dow 60,000 — a doubling of the market — by the end of the 2020s. As another example, if you’re age 40 and need your portfolio to grow by a factor of five over the 25 years remaining before reaching retirement age, you need to see Dow 150,000.

Dow 30,000 is merely a measure of where you are on your journey.

Should the market fall short of these guidelines, you may come up short as well. Investors should ultimately want to see progress in both the indexes and their portfolios.

Though it may seem difficult to achieve such large numbers, the numbers in the index become less meaningful as the Dow climbs higher. When the Dow hit 25,000 in January 2018, every 1,000 points suddenly represented just a 4% move, which the market easily achieved just eight sessions later when it hit 26,000.

A 250-point day on the Dow is no longer monumental, representing a move of less than 1%. The higher numbers you may need to see on the Dow are inevitable, but whether they get there in tandem with your personal timeline shows the importance of planning your finances above watching milestones achieved on an index.

The danger of placing too much importance on these benchmarks is that it often causes investors to measure their results in terms of a market peak, and they somehow consider their portfolio as a loss from the top.

Historically, this fallacy causes too many investors to sell into short-term rallies, trying to avoid losses from the top, without recognizing the market’s long-term trend.

Wendy Bennett is a senior financial adviser at Bennett Associates Wealth Management in Butler.