Well there you have it. The Dow closed yesterday above the 14,000 mark for the first time. Another record. Should we be worried? Should we start to lighten our positions in stocks? Maybe take a little money off the table while the pickings are good? After all, you know the old song: Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.

And look how quickly we got here. We only managed to hit the 12,000 mark on October 20, 2006. From that point the Dow took just over 6 months, 126 trading days to be exact, to reach 13,000. And now, only 60 trading days later here we are at 14,000. Shouldn't we be worried about it? Are we getting ahead of ourselves?

A little worry is always a good thing. Throwing money into a runaway market - think dotcom boom here, folks - is never good practice. Trees really don't grow to the sky. It's healthy to be concerned about the pace of growth in stock prices.

The truth is, however, the Dow at 14,000 is really not that much different from the Dow at 14,001 from a mathematical standpoint. But I know what you're thinking... It's a really big deal from an investor psychology point of view. Fair enough. Investors are bound to find plenty of reasons to take pause simply because the Dow closed above a number they think is significant. So the real question then becomes: What should you and I do about it?

The blue line on this chart depicts the march of the closing price of DIA, a proxy for the Dow. It starts from the day the Dow closed above 12,000 for the first time. It ends with yesterday's close, the first above 14,000. The vertical line indicates the close at the 13,000 mark. The closing prices line is the road map. It gives us the milestones against which to take measurements.

The green line is the daily return for DIA. It's a measure of volatility.

Do you see much in the way of change in volatility as the Dow went from 12,000 to 14,000? I don't. In fact, there is one significant change. The average daily return for DIA during these two periods climbed from 0.07% to 0.12%. The standard deviation of returns during these two periods held relatively steady at 0.61% for the first, and 0.63% for the period between 13,000 and 14,000. I'd say this is a pretty good indicator of increased confidence by investors in the strength of the underlying securities. And why not? The economy continues to do well. Inflation is under control. In general, investors feel times are good.

There is no denying the psychological significance of the dow at another numeric milestone. Some investors will get cold feet and head for the exits. Cooler heads understand the underlying fundamentals driving these price increases remain strong.