You know you’re deep into a longstanding bull market when you see things like average pedestrians keeping one eye on the market tickers outside of brokerage houses to see when the Dow Jones Industrial Average has finally breached the 20,000 mark. Who would have imagined record market highs at this point last year, when the indices ended the year in negative territory? Or when new year 2016 got off to such a rocky start, tumbling 10% in the first two weeks—the worst start to a year since 1930?
The markets eventually bottomed in mid-February and began a long, slow recovery, turning positive by the end of March, suffering a setback when the U.K. decided to leave the Eurozone and endured another hard bump right after the elections. In the end, we were disappointed; the Dow finished at 19,762.60 for the year—as the bull market has continued for another year.
This was the second year in a row that the final quarter provided investors with solid gains. The Wilshire 5000--the broadest measure of U.S. stocks—was up 4.54% in the fourth quarter of 2016, ending the year up 13.37%. The comparable Russell 3000 index gained 4.21% in the final quarter, to finish up 12.74% for the year.
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