Investing Update: Has Sentiment Shifted?
What I'm buying, selling & watching
Wednesday’s inflation reading led to the best day for the stock market since the day after the election. That propelled the market to finish with the best week since early November.
After a couple down weeks the stock market finished with the first positive week in 2025. The S&P 500 finished up 2.9%, the Nasdaq was up 2.4% and the Dow up 3.7%.
Market Recap
Weekly Heat Map Of Stocks
The stubbornness of inflation still remains. CPI came in at 2.9%, which was a bit higher than the 2.8% estimate. Core CPI came in at 3.2%, which was slightly lower than the 3.3% estimate. The incoming Trump administration will still have to fight the inflation battle when it takes over next week.
I like this breakdown of the CPI components and you can see what areas have done month over month. Shelter slowed while energy spiked a bit.
Here is where inflation is and isn’t. The overall percentages keep coming down each month. More and more areas are now showing up in the negative. A lot of positives on here.
One area where the word inflation hasn’t been mentioned is on S&P 500 earnings calls. Until this starts to pickup again, I don’t envision inflation becoming a major problem. It may remain sticky at these current levels but I don’t see a scenario where it becomes anywhere near the issue that it was.
2024 Hedge Fund Returns
Here is a look at hedge fund returns in 2024. With the S&P 500 up 23.3%, over half the hedge funds on this list beat the S&P 500 in 2024. Overall it was a very good year for hedge funds.
My portfolio finished up 49.5% in 2024, which would have been in the upper tier among hedge funds. You can read about my performance and portfolio here, Investing Update: 2024 Recap & 2025 Outlook.
