2024 Stock Market Review+2025 Outlook

Before you know it, it's already Christmas, which also means 2024 is coming to an end and a new year. This year was a big bull market full of opportunities for both US stocks and cryptocurrency. Although Hong Kong stocks $Hang Seng Index (800000.HK)$ Probably no one would think of it as a bull market, but it also ushered in at least two small summers, and I believe everyone should also reap some benefits. However, even if there are no gains or losses, it should be viewed as a learning opportunity, scrutinize the mistakes made and missed opportunities, and prepare for the next year.

Let's start with early 2024. In January, the first thing to mention was a Bitcoin spot ETF $Spot Crypto ETFs (LIST22873.HK)$ Listed. On the day of listing, the market immediately provided a short-term short selling opportunity for “Sell The News”. Bitcoin dropped to a maximum of $49,000 to $38,500 within the next two weeks. However, this event laid the foundation for this year's big cryptocurrency year.

Also in January, the two major shareholders of this year were born, Nvidia (NVDA) $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ and ultra-microcomputer (SMCI) $Super Micro Computer (SMCI.US)$ They all broke through the long-term consolidation range, then swayed all the way up, and the AI sector boom was rekindled. If you are a trend investor, these two stocks are textbook-style breakout trades. It's actually not difficult to seize the rising points. The difficulty is that you have done your homework and keep an eye on when they break through and whether they can stabilize after buying. In fact, as long as you don't think you're smarter than the moving average, everything is fine. Nvidia first fell below the 20-day moving average after 3 months, while the first time an ultra-micro computer fell below the 20-day moving average was 2 months later. If you both sell on the first day below the 20-day moving average, the profit margin will be 80% and 170%, respectively.

In addition to the two major stock kings, in fact, the Nikkei Index, which was discussed by many people this year, also broke through and broke through in January. Basically, the pattern is very similar to the two major stock kings.

In February, in addition to Nvidia continuing to soar, the market also began holding positions on concept stocks such as SoundHound AI (SOUN) $SoundHound AI (SOUN.US)$ and Arm Holding (ARM) $Arm Holdings (ARM.US)$ They all showed significant increases. On the other hand, Bitcoin began to recover and broke through the top of the Bitcoin spot ETF listing day. MicroStrategy (MSTR) is the other stock leader this year $Strategy (MSTR.US)$ At that time, it was shown that it was the best Bitcoin concept stock, far leaving behind other stocks, especially MARA, a miner stock that performed well in the last round of the bull market $MARA Holdings (MARA.US)$ and RIOT $Riot Platforms (RIOT.US)$ Everything else was overshadowed. This is already the most obvious sign, telling everyone which Bitcoin concept stock to play with in this round of bull market.

At the beginning of March, due to the weak performance of some US economic data, which boosted market expectations for interest rate cuts during the year, gold and other commodity prices all showed a strong upward trend. However, after the Fed interest rate meeting in late March, the bitmap showed that Board officials still believed that interest rates would be cut three times this year, once again confirming Chairman Powell's statement at the time that “the current policy interest rate may have reached its highest point, and monetary policy will begin to be relaxed at some point this year.” The Federal Reserve's release of pigeons set the market tone for cutting interest rates during the year. Although the Federal Reserve had too many rounds of repeated talk before officially cutting interest rates in September, the main theme is that interest rates are expected to be cut. $WANGUO GOLD GP (03939.HK)$ It was just the right time to start with the strong upward trend in gold.

On the other hand, the Bank of Japan raised the policy interest rate by 10 basis points, from negative 0.1 to 0 percent to between 0 and 0.1 percent, leaving the era of negative interest rates behind.

In April, the yen did not rise due to interest rate hikes; on the contrary, it continued to decline. The main reason was that the Bank of Japan had no clear follow-up action to raise interest rates at the time, and the US dollar continued to be strong. Even if interest rates are raised to 0.1%, arbitrage trading in yen is still very attractive.

In terms of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has seen its fourth halving. Although Bitcoin did not respond immediately after being halved, in the aftermath, this halving is probably one of the keys for Bitcoin to rise above 100,000 points this year.

Furthermore, from late April to mid-May, Hong Kong stocks ushered in a short spring period, and the Hang Seng Index rose from a low of 16,000 points to a high of 1,700 points. This is the first time this year that Hong Kong stocks have challenged 20,000 points upward. The author also suggested paying attention to ATMXJ in an article in late April to capture this sudden upward trend.

In addition to the recovery in Hong Kong stocks, May was also the legendary meme stock GameStop (GME) $GameStop (GME.US)$ The return. At the time, on May 13, Roaring Kitty, the spiritual leader of the GME retail army, posted a post on X for the first time since 2021. The content was an image of a man changing from sitting lazily to seriously sitting up to hit the plane. Driven by this, GME's stock price surged 74% to 30.45 yuan on May 13, and reached a high of 64.8 yuan on May 14. During this period, meme stocks became the focus of the market, and when listed in the US, the Chinese electric vehicle company Faraday Future (FFIE) was at risk of delisting $Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. (FFIE.US)$ It also followed the explosion of the meme trend, rising nearly 100 times from the lowest level to the highest position. Facts have proven that as long as a swarm of people blindly pursues them, an army of retail investors can push stocks to a very exaggerated level.

On the other hand, stock king Nvidia, which is also popular with many retail investors, once again broke through another rampant range in May and began another upward wave. The breakout method is very similar to the one in January. If you miss it again, it probably just proves that you haven't learned your lesson well.

In June, Apple's WWDC 2024 began. At the press conference, CEO TIM Cook revealed Apple's powerful personal intelligence system “Apple Intelligence” and the cross-platform integration of ChatGPT with Apple. The market expects that this may trigger a wave of large-scale switching. Driven by the news, Apple (AAPL) $Apple (AAPL.US)$ With all of its industrial chains on the rise, one of the industrial chains is Hongteng Precision (6088) $FIT HON TENG (06088.HK)$ , the performance was also explained.

July may be a turning point in this year's stock market, or even human history. At 18:11 EST on July 13, 2024, Trump, who was also a presidential candidate at the time, was shot by an American man Thomas Matthew Crooks during a presidential campaign rally. Fated by fate, Trump flew past a deadly sniper in seconds, and the bullet only hurt his right ear. After the shooting occurred, Trump got up under the cover of a US Secret Service bodyguard and raised his fist to the crowd. This scene became an iconic image that was widely circulated. According to Tesla CEO Musk, this scene made him more determined to support Trump's presidential run. However, due to the feverish atmosphere, the first round of the Trump deal came into being.

Also, at the end of July, the Bank of Japan announced that it would raise the policy target interest rate from 0.00% to 0.10% to 0.25%, triggering a “wave of yen divestments,” and the yen strengthened.

In August, affected by a wave of yen divestments and concerns about the health of the US economy, the Nikkei Index experienced a sharp stock crash last week, and recorded its biggest one-day decline in more than four years. In terms of US stocks, the three major indices also quickly collapsed within a few days. The number of non-farm payrolls in the US fell far short of expectations in July, and the unemployment rate triggered a recession indicator with an accuracy rate of 100% at the time — Sam's Rule. Buffett has also slashed Apple's holdings in half. Fortunately, there are many signs that the US economy is moving towards a soft landing. Time has proven that this is just a false alarm; Sam's rule has failed for the first time.

In September, the dust settled when the US cut interest rates for the first time. On the other side, the Central Bank of China also unleashed an unexpected combination of three major policies, including: one is to lower the deposit reserve ratio and policy interest rate and drive the market's benchmark interest rate downward; the second is to reduce interest rates on existing mortgages and unify the minimum down payment ratio for mortgages; and the third is to create new policy tools to support the development of the stock market. Influenced by the news, Hong Kong stock A-shares exploded, and both sides rose, ushering in a bright moment of the year. The Hang Seng Index once again rose to 23,241 points. The famous hedge fund David Tepper (David Tepper) also said at the time that it was buying more “everything” assets related to China. Unfortunately, this rapid upward trend was only maintained until the beginning of October, then remained silent until the end of the year with no significant improvement.

In October, close to the November US election, the Trump deal started again, Trump Media Technology Group (DJT) $Trump Media & Technology (DJT.US)$ Beginning in early October, it continued to rise all the way up until the end of October, with an increase of more than 200%.

In November, the dust settled on the US election, and Trump was officially elected as the new US president. Musk, on the other hand, was appointed to head the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). Musk, one of Trump's greatest heroes in winning the election, is inseparable from Trump. He attended many diplomatic events together. He is in a superior position, and some even call Musk the actual vice president. Tesla (TSLA) after Trump's victory $Tesla (TSLA.US)$ The stock price rose sharply. After breaking through the range, the stock price continued to rise. At the time of writing, it still had not dropped 20 Tesla-Antenna. The breakout in this range is also similar in shape to the breakthroughs of Nvidia and ultra-microcomputers. In other words, if you master this kind of breakthrough method, you can already seize the king of many stocks.

In addition to Tesla, cryptocurrency embraced by the Trump administration are also booming. Since breaking through the election, Bitcoin has risen all the way from $70,000 to a maximum of $108,353 at the time of writing. MicroStrategy (MSTR), with its premium price with Bitcoin and its “magical” business model like “perpetual motion machine,” surpassed Bitcoin in growth and became the hottest stock in the market at one point.

In addition, there are a number of individual stocks that recorded the most exaggerated gains in November, such as the big data analysis software company Palantir (PLTR) $Palantir (PLTR.US)$ , AI application leader AppLovin (APP) $Applovin (APP.US)$ etc.

In December, Google's quantum computer Willow came out of nowhere and showed amazing computational power and stability. It only took less than five minutes to complete a computational challenge, and if the world's most powerful supercomputer were to perform this task, it would take more than 100 trillion years — far beyond the age of the universe. As soon as the news came out, the quantum computer sector went viral. For example, IONQ $IonQ Inc (IONQ.US)$ , QUBT $Quantum Computing (QUBT.US)$ , RGTI $Rigetti Computing (RGTI.US)$ , QBTS $D-Wave Quantum (QBTS.US)$ , QMCO $Quantum (QMCO.US)$ They are all very popular for funding.

Looking at the Hong Kong and US stock market, it is clear that the rise in US technology stocks has reached the point of overheating. Traditionally, many institutional investors will review their original positions in the new year and carry out a “rebalancing” operation, and they need to reduce their holdings in the asset classes that have performed well this year, so as to increase their holdings and underperforming assets. Obviously, technology stocks that are overvalued will be the first choice to reduce holdings. It is believed that this amount of capital will first flow into places that are relatively conservative and undervalued, and high-yield stocks in Hong Kong stocks will be a good choice. Looking at recent data, Hong Kong stocks have several major interest-receiving stocks, such as HSBC (5) $HSBC HOLDINGS (00005.HK)$ Bank of China (3988) $BANK OF CHINA (03988.HK)$ , China Mobile (941) $CHINA MOBILE (00941.HK)$ Wait, the performance was good in January every year, probably due to the influence of “rebalancing.” On the other hand, earlier, the State Council's State-owned Assets Administration Commission issued a document requesting central enterprises to strengthen market value management. Furthermore, China Settlement also announced that starting next year, the handling fees for A-share dividends in the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets will be halved. It can be seen that the “China Special Assessment” may be one of the priorities for the first quarter of next year. The recommended sectors to focus on are domestic banks, domestic insurance, mainland telecommunications companies, mainland petrochemical shares, etc.

At the US market level, I believe quite a few people hold MAG-7 shares. Except MSFT $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ The other 6 are still in a very strong trend. They continue to keep an eye on whether there is a sharp decline and reduce their holdings. In addition, you can also pay attention to some emerging markets, such as Latin America. The logic is also that capital flows out of the US to other regions. Examples include MercadoLibre (MELI), the largest e-commerce platform in Latin America $MercadoLibre (MELI.US)$ and Brazilian Digital Bank Nu Holdings (NU) $Nu Holdings (NU.US)$ .

In terms of cryptocurrency, Binance founder Zhao Changpeng pointed out earlier that judging from past historical experience, the average cryptocurrency market “cycles every four years”. This is a market law that is difficult to break. The reason is that Bitcoin $Bitcoin (BTC.CC)$ Mining rewards are cut in half every four years, and the year after the halving is usually also a “bull market year”, which means 2025. 2024 is recovering, and 2025 is the real Bitcoin year. Everything is also carried out according to the script used in the past. This has also been half implemented to see if 2025 will actually have a stronger cryptocurrency bull market.

Overall, 2024 is a good year for investment. Although Hong Kong's economy is poor, it would be nice to get money from the US. Although the Hong Kong stock market is still not good, at least it's not a dead end; it is already very good that there has been progress. I hope everyone continues to make progress in the new year, and the city to come. Merry Christmas and New Year.