PUT IN WORK (1/6/2025)

We hope everyone had a fantastic New Year surrounded by friends and family! We’re back with another issue, and there are a few things we’d like to cover this time around. Last week was interesting, with markets momentarily on a sharp decline. By Friday’s close, however, they picked themselves up and ended the week down by only a fraction of what they were earlier in the week. The Nasdaq (QQQ) and the S&P 500 (SPY) ended the week down 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively.

The end of December was rough on investors, with markets falling all across the board as they performed some end-of-the-year sells just before the start of the new year. This is common and generally done to control tax implications garnered from investing. This, combined with what could be considered an overbought market, resulted in an overall negative trading month, with indices such as the Dow Jones (DJI), the Nasdaq, and the S&P 500 posting near-record monthly losses for the year. Still, even so, markets remain very positive overall. This slump extended into January, with stocks such as Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Tesla (TSLA) losing ground. Other companies such as Nvidia (NVDA), Meta (META), and Google (GOOG) moved higher, but not enough to make up for the overall losses of the market.

Cryptocurrency had a nice run. However, Bitcoin (BTC) still sits well below its $108k high from December. Stocks such as Coinbase (COIN) and MicroStrategy (MSTR) benefited from this upward movement.

Investors managed to turn things around on Friday, with big tech stocks such as Tesla and Nvidia pushing higher and elevating the market at large. Now investors are looking at this upcoming earnings season for guidance as they wait for the January Fed meeting, which should take place on January 28th and 29th.

(Nasdaq ETF (QQQ) price from January 2024 - 2025 — each candle is 1 week. Chart provided by tradingview.com.)

PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Surprisingly, our stocks climbed a bit higher over this last week. Although there are no particular standouts, we’re happy with the performance of our portfolio here both at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. We look forward to another year of investing and plan to hold all currently owned stocks for the foreseeable future. As always, thank you for reading, and happy investing.