Welcome to the final newsletter of 2024. A few stats since Anthony Pompliano and I launched Opening Bell Daily 9 months ago:

• 196 articles published

• 150+ Wall Street strategists and economists interviewed

• Over 1.2 million readers have enjoyed our reporting via Bloomberg Terminals and Inc. Magazine

Most importantly, 190,000 subscribers now start each day with this very newsletter.

That makes Opening Bell Daily one of the largest independent financial news sources in media.

Our team works extremely hard to bring you the highest quality insights every morning — and we’ll continue to do so in 2025.

Thank you for your support.

Onward!

Market catalysts in 4 charts

Nothing moved markets more this year than Donald Trump, the Federal Reserve, and artificial intelligence. 

Asset prices have whipsawed on comments and actions centered around the two newsmakers, while investors have yet to grow weary of an AI trade that’s ballooned to meteoric heights. 

The influence of the three catalysts won’t likely dissipate in 2025.

The Trump Trade

Since the election, political commentators across the aisle have concluded that Donald Trump won the White House largely due to economic factors like inflation and housing affordability. 

Whether the president-elect is the best individual to fix those issues is an open question, but investors have expressed their optimism — before and after November 5 — for Trump 2.0 by bidding up risk-assets and growth stocks.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, has soared from $69,000 to $94,000 since the day before the election.

After a rally earlier in the year when regulators approved trading for spot bitcoin ETFs, the cryptocurrency moved mostly sideways through the first ten months of the year. 

Crypto investors continue to view Trump positively, as the president-elect is interested in launching a US bitcoin strategic stockpile.

It’s the second year in a row that the cryptocurrency has secured a more than 100% annual return.

The long arm of the Fed

While Chairman Jerome Powell has cut interest rates by 100 basis points since September, his team’s messaging has turned decidedly hawkish.

Inflation is moving in the wrong direction and bond traders remain mixed on the forecast for the year ahead — on account of potential ramifications of tariffs as well as the uncertain Fed outlook. 

At the final FOMC meeting of the year on December 18, the S&P 500 declined 2.95%, the largest drop on the day of a Fed meeting since 2001.

No slowing AI

Stock indexes broke record after record in 2024, and most of the winnings have been allocated to tech names that are part of the AI boom. 

As the chart shows, the AI-fueled Magnificent Seven stocks — Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Tesla — this year vastly outperformed the benchmark S&P 500 as well as the tech-heavy Nasdaq. 

Strategists across Wall Street expect companies to keep spending on AI technology, infrastructure and energy, which should push the theme forward into the new year.

Comments or feedback? Reply directly to this email or let me know on X @philrosenn.

Traders see 23% odds of a recession before 2026, according to Kalshi, the biggest US prediction market:

Rapid-fire:

• Stocks moved lower across the board on Monday as the Santa Rally still hasn’t kicked in (Yahoo Finance)

• Natural gas surged as much as 20% on expectations for a cold January on the east coast (CNBC)

• The stock market will be closed January 9th in honor of Jimmy Carter (Investor’s Business Daily)

• Housing contract activity climbed for the fourth month in a row thanks to rising inventory (Yahoo Finance)

• From economics and private equity to fiction, here’s my roundup of the best books I read in 2024 (Blog)

• Minimum wage is set to rise on January 1 across 21 states and 48 cities and counties across the US (Axios)

• Brazil’s central bank is stepping in to support the world’s worst-performing currency (Bloomberg)

• TikTok parent company ByteDance plans to spend $7 billion on Nvidia chips in 2025, The Information first reported (Sherwood News)

• ETFs secured their first-ever trillion-dollar year in 2024, largely thanks to bitcoin (Opening Bell Daily)

Last thing:

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