Mission accomplished: despite a short pause on December 29, Wall Street completed its ninth 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% to nearly 4.770) 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 nine weeks, with the exception of the -1.5% of December 20, a decline immediately corrected by four annual records over the following five sessions.

The Nasdaq-100 (-0.43% to 16,826, but +54% in 2023) and the Dow Jones (-0.05% to 37,689) validate their longest bull run since 2019, but this is the first time in the 21st century that no consolidation lasting more than 48 hours has materialized, with stratospheric up/down ratios (such as the latest sequence of 14 gains in 15 sessions, except for that famous December 20).

The "Fantastic 7" finished 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).

Nvidia is up +240%, Meta +194%, AMD +128%, Tesla +101%, Broadcom +100%, Intel +90%, Amazon +80%, Netflix +63%, Alphabet +58%, Microsoft +57%, Apple +48%.

Tech stocks as a whole are up +55% (with an average P/E close to 40), beaten only by cruise lines (+57%).

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

It's worth noting that the '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 Rockefeller's Standard Oil (before 1911).

Bonds did not end the year with champagne, but T-bonds proved far more resilient than Bunds or OATs, with only +1 basis point on the US 10-year at 3.865%, a level comparable to mid-July.

The '30 yr' fell back two basis points to 4.01%, but paradoxically the '1 yr' and '2 yr' yields improved by -3 and -2 bps to 4.782% and 4.261% respectively.... and the '3-month' by -5 bps to 5.345%, as economists are betting that the US electoral calendar will force 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). In fact, it was an "energy" stock that ended up the red lantern of the S&P500: Emphase fell -50%, closely followed by FMC with -49.7%.

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