Volume was very light on Friday before the long holiday weekend. As a reminder, the Stock and bond markets will be closed on Monday. for the New Year's Day holiday. Based on today's price development, it seems that the market participants who stayed decided to take some profits after the market's impressive run in 2023.
When the closing bell rang, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.05% to 37,689, the S&P 500 fell 0.3% to 4,769, and the Nasdaq Compound fell 0.6% to 15,011.
Still, all three indices delivered impressive calendar-year returns. The Dow Jones rose a respectable 13.7%, while the S&P 500 posted a 24.3% year-over-year gain.
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However, the tech-heavy Nasdaq outperformed its peers in 2023, rising 43.4% amid the strength of the Magnificent 7, a group of growth stocks that includes mega caps Alphabet (GOOGL, -0.4%), Amazon.com (AMZN, -0.9%) and NVIDIA (NVDA, 0.0%).
Apple can reach $4 trillion market cap by 2024, analyst says
NVIDIA was easily the best performer of the group, more than tripling annually. The worst performing Magnificent 7 stock in 2023 was Apple (AAPL, -0.5%) with its gain of 48.4%. However, the Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives believes Apple stock has plenty of room to run in the new year.
"We believe Apple will be the first $4 trillion manufacturer Market cover by the end of 2024, given the pace of growth and monetization we estimate for Cupertino over the next year," Ives recently wrote in a note to clients.
Lingering concerns about government iPhone bans in China, as well as a "fading growth story" for the tech giant, are overblown, Ives says. Rather, investors should be encouraged by Asia's positive supply chain controls, service revenue recovery and "what we see as new technology." bull market from the beginning," says the analyst.
Apple closed Friday at $192.53, a market capitalization of $2.99 โโtrillion. To reach the $4 trillion market cap mark, AAPL's share price would need to rise around 34% from current levels to around $257.25.
Bonds and Bitcoin boom will end in 2024
Stocks weren't the only ones that had a fantastic 2023. While the bond market took a hit for most of the year, it staged a massive rally late in the year. Only in November and December, the performance of 10-Year Treasury Yield It fell more than one percentage point to 3.86%. (Bond prices and interest rates move in opposite directions.) According to Reuters This is the largest two-month rate drop since 2008.
Cryptocurrencies also rebounded sharply in 2023 on hopes that the first Spot bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) could soon gain regulatory approval. Bitcoin, for its part, has more than doubled this calendar year and is heading into 2024 trading at its highest point since spring 2022.
What does 2024 have in store for us?
There is a long list of uncertainties that people will have to prepare for in the new year, including the Federal Reserve's plans to Interest rates geopolitical risks and the upcoming US presidential elections.
Tactical investors trying to figure out how to survive in the stock market will want to follow Kiplinger's roadmap to where to invest in 2024 .
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