--- title: Economy Delivers a Last-Minute Gift to Wall Street description: The U.S. economy isn't exactly partying like 1999, but it came pretty close in the third quarter, growing faster than it has since 2003. authors: - name: Paul J. Lim url: https://money.com/author/paul-j-lim-3/ at_money_since: 2014 articles: 104 covers: - Economy and Politics - Banking - Business - Housing - Identity Theft - Investing - Retirement - Taxes social: - https://x.com/pauljlim former_staff: true published: '2014-12-23T15:11:17.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T04:58:17.000Z' section: Economy and Politics tags: - dow 18000 - Economy - GDP - wall street word_count: 273 canonical: https://money.com/economy-wall-street-dow-18000/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![141223_INV_Party_1](https://img.money.com/2014/12/575653721.jpg) It's time to stop describing this economic recovery as being "tepid." [A new report](//www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm) from the Commerce Department Tuesday morning revealed that the U.S. economy had grown at an annual rate of 5% in the third quarter. Not only does that represents a major jump from earlier estimates of 3.9% growth, it marks the economy's best performance in 11 years. And it's the second straight quarter in which U.S. gross domestic product grew at or near the historically high mark of 5%. Wall Street reacted as you'd expect, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average up another 60 points in early morning trading Tuesday to above the 18,000 mark. In just the past week, the so-called Santa Claus rally has now lifted the benchmark Dow up nearly 1000 points. Most of that rally, however, [centered on the bad news](https://money.com/santa-claus-rally-stocks-oil/) surrounding the global economy, as the slowdown overseas is putting a lid on inflation and allowing the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates near zero for some time. Today's bump, though, was all about the surprising health of the U.S. economy in general and American consumers in particular. Earlier reports showed that consumer spending, which represents more than two thirds of total economic activity in the country, had grown a decent 2.2%. But today's new report updated that figure to 3.2%. "The boost to personal consumption was much stronger than we had expected," noted Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist for Barclays Research. This would imply that the improved job market and rising net worth due to improvements in the stock and housing markets are finally being felt by American households—just in time for the holidays. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/economy-wall-street-dow-18000/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Economy and Politics", "item": "https://money.com/economy-and-politics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Financial Markets", "item": "https://money.com/financial-markets/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Economy Delivers a Last-Minute Gift to Wall Street" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/economy-wall-street-dow-18000/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/economy-wall-street-dow-18000/", "name": "Economy Delivers a Last-Minute Gift to Wall Street", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2014-12-23T15:11:17.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/economy-wall-street-dow-18000/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/economy-wall-street-dow-18000/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-16T04:58:17.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "Economy Delivers a Last-Minute Gift to Wall Street", "articleSection": "Economy and Politics", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2014/12/575653721.jpg", "width": 5143, "height": 3398, "caption": "141223_INV_Party_1" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Paul J. 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