Wall St ends flat as it crosses finish line of a tumultuous 2021

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On Friday, all three key indices of Wall St. were little changed in a thin volume trading session, as traders remained cautious before New Year’s Eve, though, all three major indices of Wall Street had scored their best three-year gain since 1999, marking off a second year of recovery from a pandemic-induced downturn.

Apart from that, as S&P 500 had notched its second-best year of record closing highs, major Wall Street indices had shelved weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual gains. In point of fact, since the US Fed’s December 14-15 policy meet, when it had signalled at least three rate-hikes in 2022 and 2023 each, growth stocks had lost some of their shines and investors had shifted to value stocks which would likely to be benefitted by the most from an economic recovery.

On top of that, most entities, consumers alongside the US economy had flourished throughout the year despite a number of obnoxious events including the January 6 capital Hill riot alongside a year-end surge in pandemic cases.

Besides, traders were mostly supported by the US Fed’s dovish stance throughout the year that had witnessed an emergence of “meme stocks,” a chronic labor shortage, a number of generous Government stimulus and a sharp shoot-up in inflation indicators.

Though, a large chunk of market negativity had been offset by a “transitory” inflation view from Fed Chair Jerome Powell alongside a ballooning demand and a price-surge.

Wall St. edges higher, post hefty gains in the year

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St.

closing bell, Dow shed 0.16 per cent to 36,3338.60 and benchmark S&P 500 lost 0.26 per cent to 4,766.18, while tech-heavy Nasdaq was nudged as much as 0.61 per cent lower to 15,644.97. In the year, Dow advanced 20.23 per cent and S&P 500 surged 28.79 per cent, while tech-heavy Nasdaq soared 23.20 per cent, while S&P 500 had scored 70 record closing highs in 2021, scoring 70 all-time highs, the second-best number of record closures behind 1928 when it had shelved 77 record closing highs.

Meanwhile, referring to Central Banks’ stances across major G7 economies, a managing director at Wedbush Securities, Steve Massocca said, “The other three big central banks - the Fed, BOJ and ECB - are all very aggressive, and there's no question that money is finding its way in securities markets.

So I think that was clearly the most important thing that took place in terms of creating the rally in 2021. ”