Financial Planning Fridays #121: 2024 Year End Review

Hi Friends, We love looking through history for clues on what may happen next in the market. History gave us a lot of reasons to be optimistic about 2024 and we were right–this was another year of great returns. Let’s look back at a few of the historical examples that we discussed this past year. In our 2024 Market Outlook video we gave you three reasons to be optimistic this year. All three proved to hold true this year! The S&P 500 has always finished positive in the year after a 20% gain year that followed a negative year. The S&P 500 has also always finished positive in election years since 1933 when an incumbent president is running for a 2nd term with an average return of 17%. And Bull markets have lasted an average of 4.2 years since 1942. We were just getting started in January of this year. Next, we looked at how the market has performed after making a new all-time high in late January 2024 and shared that it tends to continue making new highs. This year the S&P 500 continued upwards and made more than 56 new highs! In March 2024, we looked at how well the market has historically performed for the remainder of the year after getting off to a strong start. In August 2024, we saw a 10% market decline and showed you how well the market has historically performed after a 5% decline in Financial Planning Fridays #103. The market is now up more than 19% since then. Finally, in October 2024, we looked at how we may still be in the early part of a bull market and may still have quite a few gains ahead of us in Financial Planning Fridays #113. It is so important to remain optimistic and focused on the long-term when investing. The general media provides plenty of negativity everyday and we hope that our videos continue to give you reasons to remain positive. Harry Truman said, “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” We can’t tell the exact future of the markets, but we can look through history for clues and trends on what may happen next. Thank you for watching our videos this year. Our audience grew exponentially with more than 2,500 new subscribers and 500,000 views! We loved working with you in 2024 and are excited to bring you another year of Financial Planning Friday’s videos in 2025. Be on the lookout for our next Financial Planning Fridays episode. Subscribe to our Youtube Channel so you never miss an episode. Or contact us directly; schedule your 15-minute call with us today.