(New York) The New York Stock Exchange closed, on a calm note on Friday, an excellent year 2021, despite the Omicron variant, with a jump of 27% for the broad S&P 500 index, the most representative of the American market.
Over the year, the Dow Jones index gained 18.7% and 21.3% for the NASDAQ, which concentrates technology stocks.
On Friday, in a very limited market, the Dow Jones index ended down 0.16% to 36,338.30 points. The NASDAQ dropped 0.61% to 15,644.97 points and the S&P 500 0.26% to 4,766.18 points.
“This has been a surprisingly good year for investors,” said Art Hogan of National Securities.
The indices were boosted in 2021 by progress in the fight against the pandemic and by generous monetary policies.
Money continued to flow into the markets, seeking compensation after nearly 12 years of ultra-low interest rates, and with extensive government support to businesses, banks and households to counter the impact. of COVID-19.
“2021 will have been a very good year. The progression of the S&P 500 is the 11e stronger since WWII, ”said Sam Stovall, stock statistics specialist and analyst at CFRA.
“The market has known 70 records, it is the strongest score since 1954 and 1955 when there were 77 peaks”, he added.
As in 2020, the technology sector shot up with winners like Google which over the year climbed more than 60% (2893.59%, -0.91% Friday) or Apple which swelled by 34% in 2021.
The iPhone maker is flirting with the $ 3 trillion capitalization mark on Wall Street, which would be a historic first.
Tesla is not left out with a stock that started the year at $ 700 and ended it at more than $ 1,000, an increase of 40%.
The big names in tech alone, like Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, have added more than $ 2.5 trillion in valuation to the market, according to Bloomberg calculations.
The year was also one of all records for IPOs.
Record year for IPOs
“2021 was the strongest year in terms of raising money by IPO since statistics were kept in 1980,” said Brian Bertsch spokesperson for financial data firm Refinitiv.
No less than 2,165 companies have entered the market, almost double that of 2020, not counting the 671 operations of Spacs, this fashionable simplified introduction mode where the candidate merges with an empty shell (Spac) already listed on the stock market and with a round table.
Looking ahead to 2022, analysts remain moderately bullish for the market despite the inflation cloud and future monetary tightening.
“The outlook is good for 2022,” said Maris Ogg of Tower Bridge Advisors. According to her, we can bet on “a demand that has accumulated on the part of consumers, on investments by companies to restore their production chains and a policy that despite everything remains quite accommodating”.
National Securites’ Art Hogan, who sees the S&P 500 rise another 10% next year, points out that three Fed rate hikes, as discussed, would only bring key rates to around 1%. “It’s still below what we were in 2019,” he notes.
Yields on Treasuries remained stable at 1.51% on Friday against 1.50% the previous day for 10-year bonds as the bond market closed earlier.
Over one year, they have tightened significantly, when they were at 0.91% in January, with the prospect of interest rate hikes by the Central Bank (Fed) to fight inflation.