2024 Financial Year in Focus

A Retrospective Analysis

Michael Kurek

1/24/20257 min read

Politics stole the headlines throughout 2024, with many major heads of state being elected worldwide. However, the finance industry was still a well-oiled machine within the United States. Take this as you will, but those who invested in the U.S. stock market and other securities had a great year. When investing, it’s important to look at the historical changes in stocks and indexes in the U.S. and worldwide. Through this data, one can find undervalued and even overvalued stocks to invest in/short. In this article, we’ll take a look at the returns from the three largest U.S. indexes, along with indexes around the world in major continents. Commodities and forex are important markets to consider the cost of living, and we’ll see how these have changed throughout 2024.

U.S. Indexes & Stocks

The United States’ Dow Jones, one of the oldest and most common equity indexes, increased 14.07% in 2024. This is almost double its average growth of 8.70% per year. The S&P 500 increased a whopping 25.18% last year. Even with that large increase, you’d be surprised to find that this is the norm for the S&P 500. Including the bearish years, the S&P has averaged an annual return of 10.13% since 1957. This year did much better than its average that’s for sure, but it’s had much greater bullish years than 2024. The Nasdaq Composite is one of our favorite indexes, as it is with many other investors, and are you ready to hear this? The Nasdaq Composite, one of the United States’ three largest indexes, increased 31.38% in 2024. Another index in the U.S. that's important to look at is the VIX volatility index. This index measures the market's expected volatility based on the S&P 500. The VIX increased 28.11% last year, which looks like quite a bit, but this doesn’t show us the full picture. The VIX generally increases and decreases +-30 to 50% throughout the year. Just looking at the three major U.S. indexes and the VIX, you’d think the other security markets around the world did well, and you’d be mostly correct.

Before looking at European and Asian markets, let’s take a look at individual companies in the U.S. While investing in indexes through mutual funds and ETFs is generally preferred, investing in individual stocks can bring some large short-term returns. There were a few companies whose stock increased a significant amount in 2024. Not only are we basing these choices on the percent increase, but we’re also taking into account the company's market cap. Nvidia Corp (NVDA) saw a YTD price return of 171.20% and has a market cap of $3.433 Trillion. Another large return in 2024 was from Walmart Inc (WMT), which saw a 71.90% increase last year. AXP, or American Express saw a 58.40% increase, and fourth on the list is GS, or Goldman Sachs which increased 48.4%. Not only were there large increases, but there were also large decliners last calendar year. Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), a corporation put together once Walgreens was bought out saw a 66.6% decline last year. Intel (INTC) got hit hard by a 55.04% decline in 2024. These are just a few among the many large movers within the U.S. stock market throughout 2024.

European Indexes

European markets also did extremely well last calendar year. Within our weekly investing newsletter, we watch five main European indexes. These are generally the most popular and largest of the continent. For Europe, we report on the DAX Performance from Germany, the CAC 40 from France, the FTSE 100 from London, the Swiss Market Index, and the IBEX 35 from Spain. The growth and/or decline of these five indexes gives us a strong representation of how Europe as a whole or other European indexes might be acting. In 2024, some European indexes did just as well as U.S. indexes, if not better. The DAX Performance Index from Germany increased by 19.30% last calendar year. France's CAC 40, an index of the country's top forty most significant stocks, decreased 2.49% in 2024. This was the only declining index for the five European indexes we watched. The FTSE 100, which indexes UK’s top 100 companies by market cap, increased a bit last year, but only 5.39%. The Swiss Market Index increased as well, only 4.05% though. The last European index we watch is the IBEX 35 from Spain, which increased a notable 14.15%.

2024 Financial Year in Focus

A Retrospective Analysis

Michael Kurek

1/24/2025 - 7 min read

Asian Indexes

Similar to Europe, we watch five major Asian indexes: the SSE Composite from Shanghai China, the Hang Seng Index from Hong Kong, the Nikkei 225 from Japan, the KOSPI from Korea, and the Nifty 50 from India. These five Asian markets give us a good indication of the whole of Asia and how securities and markets are doing there. Firstly, the SSE Composite from Shanghai increased a fair 14.29% last calendar year. The Hang Seng Index from Hong Kong did much better, gaining 17.85% in value last year. Moving over to the East, Japan’s largest index, the Nikkei 225 did even better than the last two indexes, increasing 19.22% in just one year! Just West of Japan, in Korea, their major index, the KOSPI, decreased by a significant 9.43%. The last Asian index we watch is the Nifty 50, which is India’s index filled with the country's largest 50 companies. India’s Nifty 50 increased by 9.58% last year.

Important IPOs

IPOs, or initial public offerings are how a company offers shares to the public and becomes a public stock. There were a few large IPOs that were released in 2024, of them, the largest by far was Reddit, Inc. with the ticker RDDT. Reddit’s IPO was priced at $34 when it was released in March, which was the initial price you could buy the stock for. The end of 2024 share price was at $173.54, which is a return of 410.41%. Along with Reddit, Viking Holdings Ltd and Astera Labs, Inc. also released IPOs in 2024. These two companies currently have market caps hovering around $20 Billion. There are many more IPOs from 2024, but we won’t get into the large list of 225 of them here.

Commodities

Just as stocks and index markets have impacts on our finances, changes in commodity prices do as well. Commodities generally move a lot more per week than stock indexes ever would. Gold and silver are two important commodities to watch out for investors, as many invest in these two. Gold increased a remarkable amount last year, increasing 26.22% from December 30th, 2023 to December 29th, 2024. Silver also did extremely well, increasing by 21.3%. Now, gold and silver are two investment commodities, but what about the other commodities we watch that affect energy, food, and other prices day-to-day? Well, we also watch four other commodities in our weekly newsletter, which are: oil (crude), coal, lumber, and natural gas. We feel these four commodities affect consumers the most and give us a good idea of how other commodities are doing. Oil didn’t move much last year, it only decreased by 0.69%. Coal declined even more than oil, decreasing by 3.10%. Unlike those two, natural gas increased a whopping 44.62%, going from $2.51 to $3.61. Lastly, lumber only increased a measly 3.1%. The changes in commodities last year have greatly helped individuals, both from an investment point of view and as a consumer.

Forex

We watch six important forex pairs that we believe will give us the most information. These six pairs are all pegged to the USD, which are: EUR/USD, JPY/USD, GBP/USD, CHF/USD, CAD/USD, and finally, AUD/USD. The EUR/USD pair decreased by 5.67% last year. The JPY/USD pair declined 10.67%. Doing better than the last two, the GBP/USD pair decreased only 1.33%. The CHF/USD pair, which is the Swiss Franc, decreased by 6.81%. The CAD/USD pair got extremely volatile near the end of 2024 but overall decreased 8.02%. Lastly, the AUD/USD pair which measures the Australian dollar to the U.S. dollar declined 8.83% from December 30th, 2023 to December 28th, 2024. Forex markets are a difficult concept to grasp, but in a nutshell, it’s investing in forex pairs or exchanging one currency for another.

Crypto

Although we don’t necessarily condone crypto investing because of its high volatility and intense energy usage, it deserves some recognition. Crypto markets performed extremely well in 2024, with Bitcoin taking a majority of the headlines. Bitcoin, the largest and one of the first cryptocurrencies, increased a noteworthy 124.13% in just a single year. Ethereum, also referred to as Ether or ETH, increased 45.86% in 2024. Ethereum is one of the older cryptos, which has quite a large market cap compared to some others and small meme coins.

U.S. and international markets did extremely well throughout 2024. Along with this, commodity prices lowered making it easier financially for consumers. Gold and silver increased significantly, even more than whole indexes. While indexes increased greatly, individual companies saw much larger returns, while some also declined quite a bit. Forex markets didn’t move much and generally continued their trend from 2023. Cryptocurrencies increased loads in 2024, showing investors they could make large returns with a historically positive long-term return on investment like Bitcoin. In 2025, investors and consumers will be hit with some foreseen challenges, but with some important data and research from Market Mornings with these articles and through our weekly newsletter, these challenges will be short-lived.