S&P 500 Soars in 2024 Despite Weak Q4

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Do you like what you see? You can subscribe here.

End of year festivities for the markets
US stocks ended the last trading day of 2024 on a negative note, but ended the year highest. Asia-Pacific markets fell on tuesdaywhich was a shortened trading day for many exchanges. China’s CSI 300 ended the year up 15%, breaking its three-year losing streak, although it lost 1.6% on the day.

Bitcoin at $200,000 in 2024?
bitcoin It surpassed the $100,000 level in December 2024 after Donald Trump, largely considered a friend of cryptocurrency, won the US election. Industry executives and cryptocurrency investors see strong momentum for bitcoin, and several predict it will. increase to $200,000 this year.

Nippon Steel offers veto power to the US
the destiny of Nippon Steel planned acquisition of American steel It falls to US President Joe Biden, who has until January 7 to decide. In an attempt to persuade Biden, Nippon Steel has offered to give the US government veto power over any cuts to US Steel’s production capacityReuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Alibaba cuts price of AI model
Alibaba is Cutting prices on your visual language model. up to 85%, the company announced Tuesday. The model, called Qwen-VL, is designed to understand both texts and images. Alibaba’s move signals growing competition among Chinese tech giants seeking to gain market share for their artificial intelligence products.

(PRO) 2024 Top and Bottom Stocks
The Magnificent Seven basket of stocks has driven the S&P 500 ahead for most of 2024. But only one of them managed a podium in the three best performing stocks of the year, and he didn’t even win a gold medal. He three worst performing stocksSurprisingly, it included a market leader in technology.

A bright start, a dropped center and then a thud: that was the trajectory of the S&P 500 last year.

The broad-based index has broken through the doors since the beginning of 2024. In the first quarter of the year, it rose 10.2%. That’s more than 10 times its average profit since 2000, noted CNBC’s Robert Hum.

That momentum could not be sustained. The S&P added 3.9% and 5.5% in the second and third quarters, respectively, of 2024. In any other year, investors might not have been disappointed with those numbers. But the index’s first-quarter performance set the bar so high that subsequent quarters seemed to pale in comparison.

In the last quarter of 2024, the S&P advanced just 1.9%. To make matters worse, someone misbehaved, preventing Santa from pulling off his typical year-end rally in the stock market.

Of course, a win is a win. But it’s hard not to feel disappointed when looking back at the high we started 2024 with, or when comparing it to the average fourth-quarter gain of 4.2% since 2000.

That said, a relatively weak end to the year was not enough to derail the S&P’s rise in 2024. The index rose 23.31% in 2024, reaching a level 57 record closings on the way, after an increase of 24.2% in 2023.

AI stocks were behind much of the 2024 gains. NVIDIA shot up 171%, while Broadcomwhich portfolio manager called “The next Nvidia in terms of outperformance potential,” jumped 108%.

But uncertainties await the markets this year. Investors will have to contend with the policies of the incoming Trump administration, possibly with higher-than-expected interest rates for the year, which in turn keeps Treasury yields elevated, among other headwinds.

The start of 2025 could be bumpy. Fasten your seatbelt.

— CNBC’s Robert Hum, Jesse Pound, Gina Francolla and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.