The Week in Review 01/02/24
“Chance favours the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur
Happy New Year!
We hope your holidays were full wonderful food, friends, and family.
The three major indices closed 2023 with a nine-week win streak...participation was below-average throughout most of the last week of the year as investors looked ahead to another extended holiday weekend.
Markets were closed on Monday for New Year's Day.
Another factor that kept participation light was the understanding that stocks have made impressive moves higher since October, which had the S&P 500 approaching its all- time high close (4,796.56) last week.
The S&P 500 reached 4,793.30 at its high on Thursday, but backed off by the close and logged a slim decline on Friday.
Source: Bespoke Investment Group
Small cap stocks underperformed last week, leaving the Russell 2000 down 0.3%. That loss leaves the index up 12.1% in December and 15.1% this year.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite registered gains of 4.4% and 5.5%, respectively, in December, which leaves them up 24.2% and 43.4%, respectively, for the year.
Four of the S&P 500 sectors declined last week while seven sectors logged gains. The energy sector (-1.4%) was the worst performer by a decent margin, followed by the consumer discretionary (-0.4%) and communication services (-0.4%) sectors.
Meanwhile, the utilities (+1.1%) and consumer staples (+1.1%) sectors saw the largest gains.
Only three sectors declined in 2023 -- utilities (-10.2%), energy (-4.8%), and consumer staples (-2.2%) -- while the information technology (+56.4%), communication services (+54.4%), and consumer discretionary (+41.0%) sectors saw the biggest gains by far thanks to their mega cap constituents.
The 10-yr Treasury note yield closed the year unchanged at 3.88% after reaching an intraday high yield of 5.02% in mid-October. The 2-yr note yield declined 17 basis points this year to 4.25%.
2024 as we know is an election year… and history has shown us some very healthy election years.
Source: Bespoke Investment Group
Our markets are a bit soft this morning, as everyone returns from 2 weeks of holidays.
Have a wonderful week!!
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