(Bloomberg) — Wars in Europe and the Middle East. Global political upheaval. Angst over a potential US recession. These and other pitfalls stalked markets in 2024 but in the end investors who embraced risk reaped the rewards.
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Relatively constrained volatility across assets provided a foundation for the gains, so much so that the question now is whether bigger swings are all but inevitable in 2025. For the year just gone, MSCI Inc.’s global stock gauge fell 2% or more on only three days, on the way to an annual climb of almost 16%.
The US drove the equity rally, notably a surge of 67% in an index tracking the Magnificent Seven megacap tech firms of Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp., Nvidia Corp. and Tesla Inc.
That reflects “an extraordinary phase of outperformance” for the US as inflation cooled, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and the global economy avoided recession, according to Nick Ferres, the chief investment officer at Vantage Point Asset Management.
Other big performers included controversial cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which rose just over 120% and punched through $100,000 for the first time on President-elect Donald Trump’s support for digital assets. Gold, the more established store of value, posted a 27% jump — the largest in 14 years — as central banks and others sought a hedge for the panoply of geopolitical and economic threats.
The charts below capture how $10,000 fared in 2024 in some standout assets.
Speculators flocked to crypto anticipating a boom from Trump’s promise to make the US the global linchpin of the sector. Meme-crowd favorite Dogecoin’s 253% advance would have turned a $10,000 wager into $35,345. A similar bet on market-leader Bitcoin would have ended up at $22,046. Along the way, Bitcoin scaled a record high of $108,316 before pulling back.
While enthusiasm about the transformative potential of artificial intelligence lifted the US megacap tech sector as a whole, chipmaker Nvidia was the clear winner among major names, turning $10,000 into $27,117. By contrast, Microsoft lagged behind, adding $1,209 to such a notional investment.
Argentina’s S&P Merval Index was by far the best performer in a group of 92 primary equity indexes globally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That reflects investor optimism about President Javier Milei’s efforts to quell inflation and reverse years of endemic budget deficits. A sum of $10,000 plowed into the gauge would have become $21,377, adjusting for currency moves.
