The News
US stocks had a blockbuster 2024, marking their best back-to-back years in a quarter of a century.
The S&P 500 index climbed 24% in the last 12 months, boosted by an artificial intelligence-fueled interest in Big Tech stocks. A strong US economy and low inflation also drove numbers up, while gold and bitcoin saw huge investments.
But optimism should be tempered, The Wall Street Journal noted: Interest rates may not fall, and some stocks may be overvalued. A lesson from history is that the last time the market saw two consecutive years this good was 1997 to 1998, ahead of the bursting of the dot-com bubble.
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