Trump rings in New Year by celebrating growth of Americans' retirement funds on stock market

President Trump bid farewell to a pandemic-filled 2020 and rang in the New Year with a tweet celebrating the roaring stock market and its impact on Americans' retirement funds.

"Finished off the year with the highest Stock Market in history," Trump tweeted shortly before the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve. "Setting records with your 401k’s, just like I said you would. Congratulations to all."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 200 points on the final day of the year, to end at an all-time high of 30,606. The market was driven in part by the good news that first-time jobless benefit claims unexpectedly declined by 19,000 to 787,000 last week.

After the market bottomed out in March during the height of the first pandemic wave, the S&P 500 rose 68 percent to shatter countless records as investors reacted to the president's handling of the economy and the early congressional stimulus packages that kept unemployment lower than feared and many businesses propped.

One of the beneficiaries of the strong market were 401k retirement savings plans. Fidelity Investments reported last month that the number of 401(k) owners with $1 million or more in their retirements increased to 262,000, up about 17 percent to an all-time high.