The S&P 500 ended the crown year with a record – E24

There were small effects on US stock exchanges for much of the last trading day of the year. An upturn at the end ensured a good end to the year, while new records were set.

This is how the trading day ended:

• The S&P 500 was up 0.64 percent
• The Dow Jones rose 0.65 percent
• Nasdaq ended 0.14 percent higher

The biggest rise in leading indices in 2020 was on the high-tech Nasdaq. After 253 business days, the point value is 43.6% higher than in the same period last year.

Thus, Nasdaq had the best year since 2009 when the stock markets recovered from the financial crisis.

The S&P 500 ended the year up 16 percent, while the Dow Jones was up 7 percent.

This year’s big stock market winner was electric car maker Tesla. On the last trading day of the year, the stock was up 1.57 percent, giving a total gain of about 740 percent over the past year.

Turbulent

Thursday’s trading ends a spectacular year on Wall Street.

The broad S&P 500 Index is up or down more than one percent in 110 of 253 trading days, which is very much in historical context. By comparison, the number of trading days with such effects was just 38 last year.

In late February, the crown situation contributed to a sharp drop in the leading indices, with, among other things, a historically large drop measured in daily drops.

The development eventually ended with a more than 30 percent breakout for the collective broad S&P 500 index.

But the brutal correction did not last long. The United States Federal Reserve entered the scene with interest rate cuts and money printing.

The crisis measures gave investors a sigh of relief and the stock markets rose again. Tech stocks, in particular, were a sure winner in the US Towards the summer, which was when Wall Street returned to normal levels.

Optimism

Recently, US indices have continued to climb to new record highs, in part due to a clarified electoral situation and the start of the vaccine.

It reflects investor optimism in 2021, explains ING’s head of macroeconomics Carsten Brzeski to the Wall Street Journal.

– There is hope that we will see a synchronized global improvement in 2021, he tells the newspaper about investors’ thoughts on the year we enter.