Since Trump’s win the stock market has been on a tear! The S&P 500 is 2.44% away from its record close last week and is now up 23.08% year-to-date. The market is doing fine after the best fall in years in the USA: the S&P 500 finished the level at 5,870.62, only 147 points or 2.44% from an ATH 6,017.13 reached on November 11th 2024.
The S&P 500 50-day moving average is at 5,800 levels, which were tested successfully in the August, September, October and November, and the market has stayed strong and will do so for the rest of the year in my humble opinion.
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The US stock market had a Trump victory priced in and correctly so. Let’s see what animal spirits that Trump & Co bring to the market in 2025. Elon Musk’s role in the cabinet will bring new efficiency to the US government, which will be great for the US economy.
Year 2024 so far
2024 has been a very successful year for my stock portfolio. My personal picks have enjoyed great success with few exceptions – in order of the pick:
- September: Nvidia [NASDAQ:NVDA] +207%
- October: Skechers [NYSE:SKX] +25.7%
- November: Palantir Technologies [NYSE:PLTR] +269%
- December: General Dynamics [NYSE:GD] +17.6%
- February: Live Nation Entertainment [NYSE:LYV] +46.59%
- March: Meta Platforms [NASDAQ:META] +9.5%
- April: RTX Corp [NYSE:RTX] +18.53%
- August: Ralph Lauren [NYSE:RL] +22.58%
- September: Agnico Eagle Mines [NYSE:AEM] -4.05%
- October: Hasbro [NASDAQ:HAS] -7.15%
Taking the US S&P 500 index at the end of September 2023 (when we started the column) at 4,514.87, it has risen to 5,870.62 up +30.03% (all data October 15th, 2024); it goes to show that stock picking using fundamental research and analysis can pay off – and you can beat the market with some picks – three out of my current nine picks are beating the market - but when equally weighted the three serious outperformers doubled the average return to 65.28%, easily beating the S&P 500 index.
When we further analyze my holdings by market cap sizes we have two megacaps (over $1trillion) namely NVDA and META; usually these stocks would not offer much upside, but with the AI boom these two stocks have worked especially well in this market. This month NVDA has already briefly passed AAPL [NasdaqGS:AAPL] in terms of its market cap and both are trading around the $3.5 trillion level. I would not be surprised if NVDA becomes the number one market cap stock in the USA by the end of the year 2024! What a run!
As for the rest we have two large caps (over $100 billion), and three in the medium size bracket. The rest are small caps with less than $20 billion market cap but higher than $10 billion.
All four market cap sizes work when picking stocks as proven last year. I would prefer to pick stocks over $20 billion to less than $100 billion since these stocks will have more room to grow than megacaps or large stocks. The real small caps with less than $10 billion market caps are high risk, high reward stocks in my opinion.
The higher the market cap, the more analysts are following them, thus there are fewer surprises. My portfolio is an active 100% growth portfolio with no dividend stocks chosen. I report all actions in my column for AT+ subscribers.
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