The Nasdaq soared 43% for the year, and Nvidia's stock price soared 2.4 times, far ahead of the tech giants

* The Nasdaq surged 43% for the year, its biggest annual gain since 2020

* The S&P 500 has been on a nine-day winning streak, its longest rally since 2004

* Nvidia's stock price soared 2.4 times for the year, far ahead of the tech giants

On the last trading day of 2023, U.S. stocks edged lower. At the close, the Dow fell 20.56 points, or 0.05%, to 37,689.54, the S&P 500 slipped 13.52 points, or 0.28%, to 4,769.83, and the Nasdaq closed at 15,011.35, down 83.78 points, or 0.56%.

On a weekly basis, the major stock indexes have achieved nine consecutive positive weekly lines. The Dow and Nasdaq rose 0.8% and 0.1%, respectively, and the S&P 500 rose 0.3% for the week, the longest winning streak since 2004.

Looking back on the whole year, as inflation gradually cooled, the economy remained resilient, and the Federal Reserve signaled the end of the interest rate hike cycle, the US stock market ended strongly. The S&P 500 is up 24.2% for the year, less than 0.5% from its record high set in January 2022, the Dow is up 13.7% for the period, rising above 37,000 for the first time and ending the year to record new closing highs, and the frenzy around artificial intelligence and tech giants has pushed the Nasdaq soaring 43.4%, its biggest annual gain since 2020.

Summarizing 2023, several senior traders of the New York Stock Exchange used three key words to describe it in an interview with the first financial reporter: "noisy", "resilient" and "unexpected". Matthew Cheslock said that before the start of this year, many investors expected the market to go down, but did not expect the market to go the other way. "The reality is that the big seven tech giants are leading the market, and not only that, but the major stock indexes are all hitting new highs, which is really surprising and catches fund managers off guard. ”

Looking ahead to 2024, many traders are bullish on the market outlook. Gregory Rowe said: "U.S. stocks will not close lower in 2024, but the market is not expected to record much gains because of weaker economic and market momentum." In his opinion, the biggest market risk next year will be the geopolitical situation. Chesrock believes that the U.S. presidential election will be the main headwind for U.S. stocks next year.

Nvidia leads the Big Seven in technology

The great enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has enabled the seven tech giants to "turn around" in 2023 and push the Nasdaq to outperform. Among them, Nvidia led the way with a 2.4x annual gain, the best-performing component of the S&P 500 index, and also jumped into the trillion-dollar club, Meta shares soared nearly tripled, Tesla doubled, Amazon rose 80.9%, and Google's parent company Alphabet and Microsoft climbed 58.4% and 56.8% respectively.

By contrast, Apple rose 48.2% for the year, lagging its peers and failing to hold on to its $3 trillion market capitalization at the start of the year. Affected by the poor macro economy this year, weak sales of mobile phones and computers, especially in the summer, when total global smartphone sales hit the lowest level in more than a decade, Apple's revenue fell for four consecutive quarters, the longest performance decline since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.

In terms of market capitalization, Apple is still the most valuable company in the United States, with a market value of $2.99 trillion, followed by Microsoft and Google, with a market value of $2.80 trillion and $17,500 respectively.

The performance of other assets throughout the year

As investors weighed the economic situation and the future path of monetary policy, the 10-year Treasury yield closed at 3.86% on Friday, close to where it was at the start of the year.

U.S. Treasury yields have been volatile throughout the year. The 10-year Treasury yield, which topped 5% in October for the first time since 2007, fell back below 3.9% in recent weeks on bets that the annual rate cut cycle would begin as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates aggressively and investors are concerned about high inflation and a potential recession.

In commodities, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 12 cents, or 0.2%, to $71.65 a barrel on Friday, while Brent futures settled at $77.04, down 11 cents, or 0.1%. For the full year, U.S. oil fell 10.7% and Brent oil fell 10.3%, both of which saw their first annual declines since 2020, despite ongoing tensions in the Middle East that raised concerns about shipping disruptions.

In terms of gold prices, spot gold closed at $2,063.19 an ounce on Friday, and U.S. gold futures closed down 0.6% at $2,071.80 an ounce. Gold is up 13% this year, with prices fluctuating between a low of $1,800 and a high of $2,135.4.