NEW YORK– What a wonderful year 2024 was for investors.
U.S. stocks rose higher, carrying the S&P500 to records as the economy continued to grow and the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates.
The year saw many well-known winners, such as Big Tech, which became even bigger as their stock prices continued to rise. But it wasn’t just Apple, Nvidia and the like. BitcoinGold and other investments also rose.
Here’s a look at some of the numbers that defined the year. They are all valid from December 20th.
Remember when President Bill Clinton was impeached or when baseball player Mark McGwire hit his 70th home run against the Montreal Expos? That was the last time the US stock market ended a second straight year with a jump of at least 20%, something the S&The P 500 is on track to perform again this year. The index is up 24.3% so far this year, excluding dividends, following last year’s 24.2% gain.
The number of all-time highs of the S&P500 has been set so far this year. The first came early, on Jan. 19, when the index capped a two-year comeback from the slump caused by high inflation and worries that the high interest rates set by the Federal Reserve to combat it would trigger a recession. But the index was methodical the rest of the year, setting a record in every month outside of April and August, according to S.&P Dow Jones Indices. The last came on December 6.
The number of times the Federal Reserve has cut its key interest rate from 20-year highs this year has provided some relief for the economy. Expectations for these cuts, along with hopes for more in 2025, have been a major reason why the US stock market has been so successful this year. However, the cuts of 1 percentage point are still not enough 1.5 percentage points that many traders had predicted for 2024 at the beginning of the year. The Fed disappointed investors in December when it said it may cut rates only twice more in 2025, less than it previously expected.
That’s how many points the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose the day after Election Day, as investors bet on what Donald Trump would say. Trump’s return to the White House will mean for the economy and the world. The more widely followed S&The P500 rose 2.5% for its best day in almost two years. In addition to Bitcoin, bank shares and smaller winners were also seen as big winners. The increase has since slowed amid concerns that Trump’s policies could also increase inflation.
The level where Bitcoin reached a record above $108,000 last month. Interest rates have been rising as interest rates fall, and received a particularly big boost after Trump’s election. He has turned heel and become a fan of crypto, and he has been named a former regulator who is seen as friendly to digital currencies as the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, replacing someone critics said was overly aggressive in his supervision. Bitcoin was below $17,000 just two years ago collapse of crypto exchange FTX.
Gold rose this year as it also hit records and had a run as strong as US stocks. Wars around the world have boosted demand for investments considered safe, such as gold. It has also benefited from the Fed’s rate cut. When bonds earn less interest, they attract fewer potential buyers away from gold, which gives investors nothing.
It’s a favorite song of Elon Musk, and it’s also a threshold that Tesla’s stock price crossed in December when it set a record. The song has a long history among marijuana enthusiasts, and Musk famously said in 2018 that he had secured financing to take Tesla private. $420 per share. Tesla soared this year, up from less than $250 early, partly on expectations that Musk’s close relationship with Trump could benefit the company.
That’s how much revenue Nvidia made in the nine months through October 27, showing how the artificial intelligence frenzy is generating mountains of money. Nvidia’s chips are driving much of the move to AI, and Nvidia’s revenue has risen in the past nine months from less than $39 billion the year before. Such growth has boosted Nvidia’s value to a total of more than $3 trillion.
GameStop’s earnings on May 13 after Keith Gill, better known as ‘Roaring Kitty’, appeared online for the first time in three years to shore up the video game retailer’s stock, which he helped skyrocket to unimaginable heights during the ‘ meme stock rage ” in 2021. Several other meme stocks also rose following his May post on social platform X, including AMC Entertainment. Gill later disclosed a significant stake in online pet products retailer Chewy, but he sold all his possessions at the end of October.
That’s how much the U.S. economy grew, on an annual basis, seasonally adjusted, in each of the first three quarters of this year. Such growth exceeded what many pessimists expected when inflation reached 9% in the summer of 2022. The fear was that the drug the Fed had prescribed to beat high inflation – high interest rates – would cause a recession. Households at the bottom of the income spectrum in particular are now feeling the pain, because they are still faced with high prices. But the economy as a whole has remained remarkably resilient.
This is the vacancy rate for U.S. office buildings — an all-time high — through the first three quarters of 2024, according to data from Moody’s. The fact that rates remained stable for most of the year was a win for office building owners, as rates had risen steadily from 16.8% in the fourth quarter of 2019. Demand for office space then weakened the pandemic led to the popularization of office space. of remote working.
That is the total number of previously occupied homes sold nationwide through the first eleven months of 2024. Sales would need to rise 20% year-over-year in December for 2024 home sales to match the 4.09 million existing homes sold in 2023, a nearly 30-year low. The U.S. housing market is in a sales slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began rising from pandemic-era lows. A shortage of homes for sale and high mortgage rates have discouraged many potential homebuyers.