“Capitalism does work, and it responds positively to challenges. Rather, Mies says he was bullish about the success of an eventual Covid-19 vaccine. The message wasn’t necessarily to go out and buy stocks, says the founder and chief investment officer of 6 Meridian, a wealth management firm in Wichita, Kan. “Businesses learn how to make money during good and bad times.”īack in April, Andrew Mies recalls hosting a webcast with clients to discuss the market and the pandemic. “It goes to show that the stock market is pretty tough to take down,” says Neil Hennessy, chief investment officer of Hennessy Funds in Novato, Calif. elections looming in November and the more recent surge in Covid-19 cases, stock prices have climbed, and the market has reached new all-time highs. The S&P 500 fell 9.6% in a three-week span in September-nearly qualifying as a market correction-before once again rallying into the end of the year. Like the messenger from Marathon, the market collapsed from exhaustion,” he says. The S&P 500 experienced its fastest-ever bear market, clocking in at just 33 days before its third-fastest recovery to a breakeven level in about five months, notes Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York. That scenario has happened before-most recently in 1987-but the speed of the market’s recovery was surprising but also somewhat typical. The year will be bookended by two different bull markets, with a short-lived bear market in the middle. With that message of resilience in mind, here’s a look back at this year in the stock market. “People are resilient, and they try to right things to the extent they can.” The economy, the stock market and Americans have persevered to various degrees following the “unexpected shocks” earlier in the year, Erickson adds. “One of the big takeaways from this year, after the worst of the pandemic became apparent, was the concept of resilience,” says Lisa Erickson, senior vice president and head of the traditional investments group at U.S. This is all despite a 34% drop in the spring from its February peak. The S&P 500 is up more than strategists forecasted this time last year (they called for an increase of about 5%), and it’s even having a better year than its historical average (about 10%). The economy’s nascent recovery gets much of the credit for the market’s gains, as does a federal stimulus package, massive amounts of liquidity from the Federal Reserve and the rapid development of multiple Covid-19 vaccines.Įven ignoring the pandemic for a moment, 2020’s stock market defied expectations. The S&P 500 has surged almost 65% since its March low and is on track to finish the year up nearly 14%. There are many years that investors easily forget, but 2020 certainly won’t be among them. These facts might seem somewhat unsurprising if it wasn’t for the historic events that occurred in the middle, namely the worst global pandemic in a century and the almost shockingly brief bear market that accompanied it. The year two thousand and twenty is drawing to a close much like it began: Stocks in a bull market, notching fresh all-time highs.
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