Mission accomplished: despite a slight pause on December 29, Wall Street completed its 9th consecutive week of gains, and the US indices ended the year 0.2% or 0.4% shy of their annual or all-time records (Nasdaq-100 and Dow Jones).

The S&P500 (-0.28%) gained +0.4% over the week, signing its longest bull run in 20 years... but above all, it is a unique feat in history, never having lost more than 0.8% in 9 weeks, with the exception of the -1.5% of December 20, immediately corrected by 4 annual records over the following 5 sessions.

The Nasdaq (-0.43% at 16.826 but +54% in 2023) and the Dow Jones (-0.05%) validated their longest bull run since 2019, but this is the 1st time in the 21st that no consolidation lasting more than 48H has materialized, with stratospheric up/down ratios (like the latest sequence of 14 gains in 15 sessions, except for that famous December 20).

The 'Fantastic 7' ended rather lower on Friday (Tesla -1.9%), but the 10 biggest 'technos' (including the '7') will collectively gain +110% in 2023 (with an average P/E of over 50).
Nividia +240%, Meta +194%, AMD +128%, Tesla +101%, Broadcom +100%, Intel +90%, Amazon +80%, Netflix +63%, Alphabet +58%, Microsoft +57%, Apple +48%.

The 'techno' stocks as a whole are gaining +55% (average P/E close to 40) and this sector is beaten only by cruise lines (+57%).

In a note published last night, Dan Ives, the star analyst at Wedbush Securities, reiterated his expectation of a further rise of around 25% in the major US technology stocks next year (the "Fantastic 7" + a few semiconductors), which would be an undeniable driving force for global equity markets.

It's worth noting that these 'Fantastic 7' have gained +103% this year (on an equally-weighted basis) and accounted for 90% of the S&P500's performance, a capital concentration unseen in a century, along with the railways and John.D Rockefeller's Standard Oil (before 1911).

No champagne year-end for bonds, but T-Bonds are proving far more resilient than Bunds or OATs, with only +1pt on the US 10-year at 3.865%, a level comparable to mid-July.

The '30 yr' fell by 2pts to 4.01%, but paradoxically the yields on the '1 yr' and '2 yr' improved by -3 and -2pts to 4.782% and 4.261% respectively... the '3 month' by -5pts to 5.345%, as economists are betting that the US electoral calendar will require monetary easing to start very early in the year, in order to adopt a more neutral stance in October November 2024.

Oil ended little changed (-0.5% to $71.4 on the NYMEX) and lost -10.5% over the year ($80/71.5).
It was an "energy" stock that ended up the S&P500's red lantern: Emphase fell -50%, closely followed by FMC with -49.7%.


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