Macro

Housing stayed frozen as mortgage rates lingered at 6.5-7.5% and sales hit multi-decade lows, while office CRE distress deepened against a wall of maturities; home values held on lock-in scarcity, and the Fed's September cut brought modest hope.

A soft-landing year with resilient spending and September Fed cuts, but a bifurcated consumer (strained low-end, softening restaurant traffic) and EV-demand disappointment (BYD outselling Tesla, Hertz dumping EVs) capped the mood; October ports strike briefly snagged goods flow.

GLP-1 leaders (Lilly hitting record value) kept me euphoric early, but managed care melted down under Medicare Advantage rate cuts and rising medical costs, the Change Healthcare cyberattack disrupted the system, and Medicare's first negotiated drug prices bit;

Reshoring, infrastructure spending and a booming data-center/electrification capex cycle (power and electrical equipment) kept order books strong; Boeing's quality crisis and the Key Bridge collapse were specific drags…

Oil drifted soft and range-bound near $80, but exploding AI data-center power demand, 16-year-high uranium prices, and a wave of hyperscaler nuclear deals turned the electricity side of energy into a powerful new profit engine, lifting owners' mood despite lackluster crude.

A strong bull market, spot-Bitcoin-ETF approvals (an asset-gathering bonanza), reviving M&A and IPOs, Fed rate cuts, and the private-credit boom made it an excellent year, capped by a post-election bank rally on deregulation hopes and Bitcoin topping $100,000.

AI-driven ad targeting and record political-ad spending powered a strong year; streaming reached profitability and Meta/Alphabet/Netflix led the sector higher. Steadily positive.

A euphoric turnaround as the AI data-center load boom repriced us as power plays for the first real demand growth in twenty years, Fed rate cuts revived the yield bid, and nuclear-restart and SMR deals ignited a generation renaissance.

Gold broke out to a string of record highs on central-bank buying and the Fed's rate-cut cycle, copper spiked to a record in May on electrification demand, and precious-metals owners enjoyed a strong, appreciating year.

Nvidia surpassed Microsoft and Apple with a $3.33 trillion market cap, driven by surging demand for its AI chips and data center growth. The milestone underscores Nvidia's dominance in the AI-driven tech boom and highlights semiconductors as the S&P 500's largest sub-industry. Investor enthusiasm propelled the S&P 500 to a record high, reflecting strong confidence in AI-focused companies.

Tech sentiment is strongly positive this month, driven primarily by Nvidia overtaking Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company, a milestone underscoring the sector’s shift toward AI-driven growth. The market is pricing in sustained leadership for semiconductor firms at the forefront of accelerated computing, with Nvidia’s valuation milestone reflecting broader confidence in AI infrastructure demand. While macro conditions remain a background factor, the sector’s momentum is rooted in this pivotal event.

Early-year uncertainty from the Congressional Ukraine-aid stall gave way to April's $61B supplemental, and Iran-Israel strikes, the Israel-Hezbollah war and China's Taiwan drills sustained record global demand;