Yes, you idiots who still think in spite of all contrary evidence that government can't do anything get on board look what the Obama administration has done for the investor class in this country! Anyone who thinks that the government had nothing to do with this better think again. And those on the left better start figuring out how to make government work for them like it has workjed for these people because they did phenomenally well this year while the rest of us mostly got fucked.
For Stocks, an Amazingly Good Year
S. & P. 500 Rose Nearly 30%; All Indexes Soared
By Nathaniel Popper
It was the market rally that defied gravity and left many with a case of vertigo.
Despite turbulence in Washington, China and Europe, which threatened at several points to pull the world into another recession, stock prices just kept rising in 2013. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index led the way, ending the year almost 30 percent higher than it began, or 32.4 percent higher with dividends counted in. That’s the biggest jump since 1997, when the technology bubble was inflating. Even the returns from the heady years of the real estate boom were left in the dust.
As 2013 drew to a close and evidence of a strengthening economic recovery mounted, Wall Street was feeling giddy. But the feeling was tinged with a sense of anxiety that the ascent might have been fed by a bit too much hot air.
“It’s really great, but you just don’t feel entirely comfortable with it,” said Dan Morris, the global chief investment strategist at the asset manager TIAA-CREF.
Most analysts delivered their forecasts for 2014 with a good dose of caution, warning that corporate profit would have to catch up with stock prices before further gains were warranted.
In other popular corners of the financial markets, investors were left nursing their wounds after previously reliable assets turned negative. Goldbugs were routed as the price of gold plummeted 28 percent. The drop came after years in which pessimistic investors stockpiled gold as a hedge against bad times. Gold finished on Tuesday at $1,202.30 an ounce.
More investors felt the sting of a decline in the bond market after decades in which bonds were trumpeted as the safest place for retirement money. The prices of bonds fell as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury nearly doubled during the year, ending on Tuesday at 3.03 percent. A Bank of America index of the total returns on United States government bonds fell 3.2 percent for the year, the first annual decline since 2009. Few are predicting much of a turnaround any time soon, given the likelihood of a continuing rise in interest rates.
All of the big moves of 2013 were much greater than most financial analysts expected at the start of the year. Coming out of 2012, a cloud of anxiety, similar to the current one, hovered over Wall Street. That was caused, in no small part, by the fractious debate over the so-called fiscal cliff, which was resolved only on the last day of 2012. The average prediction of strategists at the big banks was that the S.&P. 500 would rise a modest 7.3 percent in 2013, according to a tally done by Bloomberg.
Those projections were quickly upended when the year began with a rally that ran almost unbroken for months.
The rest of the story: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/for-stocks-an-amazingly-good-year/
For Stocks, an Amazingly Good Year
S. & P. 500 Rose Nearly 30%; All Indexes Soared
By Nathaniel Popper
It was the market rally that defied gravity and left many with a case of vertigo.
Despite turbulence in Washington, China and Europe, which threatened at several points to pull the world into another recession, stock prices just kept rising in 2013. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index led the way, ending the year almost 30 percent higher than it began, or 32.4 percent higher with dividends counted in. That’s the biggest jump since 1997, when the technology bubble was inflating. Even the returns from the heady years of the real estate boom were left in the dust.
As 2013 drew to a close and evidence of a strengthening economic recovery mounted, Wall Street was feeling giddy. But the feeling was tinged with a sense of anxiety that the ascent might have been fed by a bit too much hot air.
“It’s really great, but you just don’t feel entirely comfortable with it,” said Dan Morris, the global chief investment strategist at the asset manager TIAA-CREF.
Most analysts delivered their forecasts for 2014 with a good dose of caution, warning that corporate profit would have to catch up with stock prices before further gains were warranted.
In other popular corners of the financial markets, investors were left nursing their wounds after previously reliable assets turned negative. Goldbugs were routed as the price of gold plummeted 28 percent. The drop came after years in which pessimistic investors stockpiled gold as a hedge against bad times. Gold finished on Tuesday at $1,202.30 an ounce.
More investors felt the sting of a decline in the bond market after decades in which bonds were trumpeted as the safest place for retirement money. The prices of bonds fell as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury nearly doubled during the year, ending on Tuesday at 3.03 percent. A Bank of America index of the total returns on United States government bonds fell 3.2 percent for the year, the first annual decline since 2009. Few are predicting much of a turnaround any time soon, given the likelihood of a continuing rise in interest rates.
All of the big moves of 2013 were much greater than most financial analysts expected at the start of the year. Coming out of 2012, a cloud of anxiety, similar to the current one, hovered over Wall Street. That was caused, in no small part, by the fractious debate over the so-called fiscal cliff, which was resolved only on the last day of 2012. The average prediction of strategists at the big banks was that the S.&P. 500 would rise a modest 7.3 percent in 2013, according to a tally done by Bloomberg.
Those projections were quickly upended when the year began with a rally that ran almost unbroken for months.
The rest of the story: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/for-stocks-an-amazingly-good-year/
