Tuesday, January 4, 2022

So Long, 2021

 

By Alex Eule |  Friday, December 31

Happy New Year! A year ago, many of us were looking forward to a better and healthier year. Unfortunately, the pandemic had other plans -- and Covid is now certain to be with us for at least part of a third year.

For stocks, though, 2021 couldn't have gone much better. Despite a small loss in light trading today, the S&P 500 finished the year up 27%, capping the large-cap index's best three-year stretch (+90%) since 1999. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 19% on the year, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 21%. All three indexes are off record highs, but only by a bit. 

It was a year for the record books. My colleague Connor Smith put together all the milestones set in 2021. Here are a few highlights: 

·        The S&P 500 had 70 record closes during the year.  

·        A record 450 exchange-traded funds launched in 2021. ETFs pulled in some $900 billion in new money, bringing the ETF total to $7 trillion. 

·        Reddit's WallStreetBets forum, which launched the meme-stock craze, went from 1.7 million users in January to a year-end total of more than 11 million. 

·        Proceeds from operating company IPOs totaled $118 billion, nearly double the previous record.   

·        A record 612 special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, went public, raising 162 billion in the process.

Apple, meanwhile, is just a few per-share dollars away from becoming the first company with a $3 trillion market value. The iPhone maker rose 34% in 2021, one of several strong results for Big Tech companies. Microsoft was up 51% on the year, while Google-parent Alphabet rose 65%. Chip maker Nvidia, which now has a market value of more than $700 billion, soared 125%. 

Those large moves helped lift the broader market higher. For anyone looking to find fault with 2021's market gains, it would be the outsized influence of those large stocks. David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Rosenberg Research, tweeted today: 

I hate to be a downer before we break out the bubbly, but beneath the veneer, the average Dow and S&P 500 stock is down 10% from the 52-week high. Divergences abound. Sometimes you just have to scratch the surface to see what is really going on.

But that's now a story for next year. For 2021, stocks were a happy place. 

Thanks for spending another year with us. Happy new year to you and your families. Here's to a much healthier 2022. 

Barron's is now accepting nominations for the third annual Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance. The deadline for submissions is Jan. 15, 2022. Apply here.

 

Watch our TV show on Fox Business at special times this week: Friday at 6 p.m. ET; Saturday at 11 a.m. ET; or Sunday at 10 a.m. or 11:30 a.m. ET. This week, see an interview with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on artificial intelligence and the future of tech.

 

 


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)