China and the US headed the list of last year’s top-performing equity markets among larger economies while crude oil prices closed in the red to cap a massive yearly slump.
The US dollar on Wednesday added slightly to gains that have made it the year’s star major currency.
On Wall Street, stocks fell on Wednesday, but the S&P 500 closed last year near its record high. The index hit records in more than 50 sessions throughout the year.
“Markets put in a solid year in spite of significant headwinds that could have easily derailed a multi-year bull market,” Clearpool Group chief market strategist Peter Kenny said. “The most the bears got out of [last] year was a 10 percent correction on an intraday basis, and the markets stubbornly moved higher, and for good foundational reasons.”
The S&P 500 ended its third-straight year of double-digit percentage gains. The benchmark added 11.4 percent last year. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 7.5 percent, and the NASDAQ Composite gained 13.4 percent for the year.
On a total return basis, the S&P 500 gained 13.7 percent last year.
On Wednesday, the Dow fell 160 points, or 0.89 percent, to 17,823.07, the S&P 500 lost 21.45 points, or 1.03 percent, to 2,058.9 and the NASDAQ Composite dropped 41.39 points, or 0.87 percent, to 4,736.05.
In Latin America, Argentina’s benchmark stock index added 59 percent last year and Brazil’s Bovespa shed nearly 3 percent. Colombia’s IGBC fell 11 percent and Mexico’s IPC was little changed, up less than 1 percent.
The stand-out equity performer among top economies this year was China, where the CSI300 index ended last year with gains of near 52 percent. The index added more than 25 percentlast month alone, its best month since April 2007, in part as foreigners won wider access to Chinese stocks.
“China stocks have done really well this year and the dollar move has also been very interesting,” Societe Generale foreign exchange strategist Alvin Tan said. “It barely moved against the other major currencies in the first [half] of the year and all the big gains came in the second.”
The US dollar ended last year up 12.8 percent against a basket of major currencies, its best performance since 1997.
The euro, undermined by bets that the European Central Bank will have to start buying government bonds to avert deflation, was down 0.5 percent at US$1.2098, having touched a two-and-a-half-year low of US$1.2095.
The Russian ruble was down 5 percent on the day, as a more than 76 percent plunge for the year marked its worst performance since Russia defaulted in 1998.
The bitcoin currency closed the year only slightly better than the ruble, falling 57 percent to about US$318. It peaked at US$995 in January last year.
US government debt that matures in 20 years and beyond booked a 27 percent return, according to Barclays. That would be its biggest annual gain since 2011, when it generated a 33 percent return.
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