Dow needed just a 5-cent bump in any blue-chip stock to reach 20,000

The Dow Jones industrial average came within 0.37 points of reaching 20,000 on Friday, but that doesn't tell the whole story.

In order to obtain that remaining fraction of a point, any Dow component would have needed to rise by just five cents at that time. A five-cent move is equivalent to a 0.02 percent move in Goldman Sachs, the highest-priced Dow stock, or a 0.18 percent move in Cisco Systems, the lowest-priced component. The Dow would have also reached 20,000 if five Dow stocks would have gained 1 cent each at that point.

At 12:43 p.m. ET, the Dow hit 19,999.63 and continued flirting with the milestone throughout the afternoon.

Dow intraday chart