Review of the Most Important Economic Terms in 2023

Banks are supposed to be boring, but they were anything but in 2023. The bank failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic shook the financial world and sent savers in search of a better understanding of if and how their money is protected.

In 2023, AI continued its ascent, posing a threat to nearly every industry. From autonomous driving to healthcare, its influence kept expanding, prompting investors to contemplate the future.

Sadly, threats of a government shutdown as the U.S. government approached the debt ceiling made their annual return as members of Congress could not come to terms on approving continuing resolutions to fund the government until the very last minute, once again. They did, but it cost the House Speaker his job, and the can was simply kicked down the road, guaranteeing that we will likely see this term again next year.

As the U.S. Treasury market continued to spiral lower and tensions between the U.S. and Russia, and the U.S. and China heightened, there was more talk of the rising dominance of the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa as global superpowers.

Alexander Hamilton’s creation got a lot of attention in 2023 as treasury prices slid into their third year of a bear market, and the public’s appetite for them was called into question. The Federal Reserve’s unwinding of its balance sheet also put trillions of dollars of Treasury Bills (T-Bills)

Heading into the final few weeks of 2023, markets have come a long way from 2022’s losses, boosting optimism about 2024. The top and bottom three stocks below are Russell 1000 Index constituents that returned the highest and lowest year-to-date (YTD) total returns through the close of the market on Dec. 1, 2023.

Bottom 3 Stocks of 2023