A view of the ball drop during the 2025 New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square on December 31, 2024 in New York City.
TheStewartofNY | Filmmagic | Getty Images
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open informs investors about everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
What you need to know today
End of year celebrations for markets
US stocks ended the last day of trading in 2024 in the negative, but they finished the year higher. Asia-Pacific markets fell on Tuesdaywhich was a shortened trading day for many exchanges. China’s CSI 300 ended the year 15% higher, snapping a three-year losing streak, although it lost 1.6% on the day.
Bitcoin at $200,000 in 2024?
Bitcoin it breached the $100,000 level in December 2024 after Donald Trump, who is widely seen as friendly to the cryptocurrency, won the US election. Industry executives and crypto investors are seeing strong momentum for bitcoin, and several are predicting that it will rise to $200,000 this year.
Nippon Steel offers US veto power
Fate of of Nippon Steel planned acquisition US Steel remains up to US President Joe Biden, who must decide by January 7. In an attempt to convince Biden, Nippon Steel offered to donate to the US government veto power over any reductions in US Steel’s production capacityReuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Alibaba lowered the price of AI models
Alibaba is lowering the prices of its visual language model up to 85%, the company announced on Tuesday. The model, called Qwen-VL, is designed to understand both text and images. Alibaba’s move signals increasing competition between Chinese tech giants looking to capture market share for their artificial intelligence products.
[PRO] The best and worst stocks of 2024
Seven magnificent baskets of shares launched S&P 500 forward for most of 2024. But only one of them made it to the podium in the three stocks with the best results year — and he didn’t even win a gold medal. The the three worst stockssurprisingly, included the market leader in technology.
Conclusion
A brilliant start, a weak middle and then a flat shot – that was the trajectory S&P 500 last year.
The broad-based index broke through the gates right at the start of 2024. It jumped 10.2% in the first quarter of the year. That’s more than 10 times the average increase since 2000, noted CNBC’s Robert Hum.
That momentum could not be sustained. The S&P added 3.9% and 5.5%, respectively, in the second and third quarters of 2024. In any other year, investors might not have been disappointed by those numbers. But the index’s first-quarter performance set the bar so high that subsequent quarters seemed to pale in comparison.
In the last quarter of 2024, the S&P limped forward by just 1.9%. To make matters worse, someone was being mean, preventing Santa from holding his typical end-of-the-year gathering at the stock market.
Of course, a win is a win. But it’s hard not to feel disappointed when we look back at the high we started with in 2024, or when we compare it to the average fourth-quarter increase of 4.2% since 2000.
Still, a relatively weak end to the year wasn’t enough to derail the S&P’s rally in 2024. The index is up 23.31% in 2024 — scoring 57 the record is closed by the way — after a 24.2% increase in 2023.
Artificial intelligence stocks were behind much of the gains in 2024. Stocks of Nvidia increased by 171%, while Broadcomwhich one portfolio manager called “the next Nvidia in terms of outperforming potential,” jumped 108%.
But this year the markets face uncertainties. Investors will have to contend with the policies of the incoming Trump administration, likely higher-than-expected interest rates for this year, which in turn keep Treasury yields high, among other headwinds.
The beginning of 2025 could be difficult. Fasten the belt.
— CNBC’s Robert Hum, Jesse Pound, Gina Francolla and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.
