PARIS: Wall Street stocks moved higher on Tuesday, looking to ring out the year with gains as did Europe’s main stock markets, as all eyes turn to 2025 and the impact that the policies of US President-elect Donald Trump will have on the global economy. Despite political upheavals, stock markets and bitcoin smashed records in 2024, fuelled by investor enthusiasm for AI, falling interest rates, and hopes of tax cuts. Here are four of the most remarkable aspects of 2024 on financial markets:

Wall Street’s three main stock indices blew past record highs to set new peaks in 2024, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing above 45,000 points, the S&P 500 above 6,000 and the Nasdaq Composite above 20,000. After dropping more than one percent on Monday as investors booked profits and broke hopes of a so-called Santa Claus rally, the Dow added 0.3 percent as trading got underway.

“Sliding Treasury yields are helping in the repair work along with some rebound action in the mega-cap stocks and perhaps some New Year’s Eve spirit that is keeping the trading mood light,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.

“It was an exceptional year, driven by the performance of tech shares thanks to artificial intelligence,” said Christopher Dembik, senior investment advisor at Pictet Asset Management. The Dow was set to end the year up by around 13 percent, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, which have more tech stocks, were set to notch annual gains of nearly 24 percent and 30 percent respectively.

Shares in Nvidia, which makes processors particularly prized to run AI models including applications such as ChatGPT, were on track to rise more than 175 percent in 2024.

“It’s now been about two years that ChatGPT was launched and it’s been two years that the AI buzz pushed some US Big Tech companies to the sky,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank. “Nvidia, which has become the icon of the AI rally, gained almost 1000 percent since then, the Magnificent Seven nearly 100 percent since last November,” she added. That pushed global stock markets to record-high levels this year, as did a tech boom on rapid growth for the artificial intelligence sector.

In Europe, London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index closed up 0.6 percent and the Paris CAC 40 rallied 0.9 percent in a shortened trading day. Over 2024, London gained nearly six percent. Paris fell 2.2 percent over the year, with the index hit late in the year by political turmoil in France, while China’s economic slowdown impacted the luxury sector.

Frankfurt, whose last trading day was Monday, surged nearly 19 percent over the year despite Europe’s biggest economy Germany enduring a tough time. Traders closed out the year “amid uncertainty over monetary policy and the economic outlook under a Trump presidency”, Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, noted Tuesday.

Asian stock markets ended the year mainly in the red following a poor lead from Wall Street.

Concerns about the slow pace of US interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and uncertainty about Trump’s tariff plans have soured the mood during recent sessions. “In Asia, notably China, tariffs may appear to be a manageable obstacle if they were the only concern,” said Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management. “However, China’s economic difficulties go well beyond simple trade conflicts. The nation is also contending with serious domestic consumption challenges and self-induced setbacks in its technology sector,” Innes added.

In 2025, investors are keeping a wary eye to see if Donald Trump implements threatened tariff hikes, as well as the outcome of early elections in Germany in February. Bitcoin rode expectations of deregulation under Trump to break the $100,000 level and rose more than 120 percent. Ethereum rose more than 40 percent, even if it did not set a new all-time record.

Gold also set a new record as it benefitted from its safe-haven appeal during times of geopolitical tensions. Commodities such as coffee and cocoa set new records as poor weather caused supply concerns.

The central banks of major Western nations finally began to cut interest rates they had hiked to tame an inflation spike triggered by the post-pandemic recovery and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Switzerland got the ball rolling in March, followed by the European Central Bank in June and the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve in September. Investors as well as central banks were anxious about the pace of interest rate cuts: Not too fast to reignite inflation but not so slow activity falls. — Agencies