Goldman Trader's Final Take On 2024

The new year has barely started and Goldman's head of hedge fund coverage, Tony Pasquariello has already published his first note of the year, one laying out a brief set of "short observations" - all 18 of them - on the past year, as well as a check-down of the scoreboard, and a few charts.

We excerpt from the full note below (available to pro subscribers in the usual place):

1. While not without some challenging moments, 2024 was a terrific year for US equities (I debated the word choice here -- particularly given a soft finish in December -- but one can argue a doubling of the long-term average annual return qualifies as “terrific”).  For the major indices, these are total returns and Sharpe ratios (ranked by the latter): S&P +25% / 2.0 ... NDX +26% / 1.4 ... INDU +15% / 1.3 ... SPW +13% / 1.1 ... MID +14% / 0.9 ... RTY +12% / 0.6.