The Stock Market Is The Best In Years

The Dow Jones industrial average is logging its best start to the year in almost two decades. It ended the month of January up 5.8 percent.

That is the strongest January since 1994. The Dow is just 304 points from its all-time high.

The S&P 500 finished the month 5 percent higher, its best start to the year since 1997. The Nasdaq was up 4.1 percent.

An upbeat jobs report has stocks off to a strong start on Wall Street on Friday, getting February off with a bang. The Dow posting triple figure gains in the morning hours. At 11:30 it was up 129 points.

The government's latest jobs report shows the unemployment rate rising a tick, to 7.9 percent. But the Labor Department report is otherwise positive, as employers added 157,000 jobs in January and hiring figures for the past two years were revised upward.