U.S. stocks complete a record run in 2017

Taken a look at your stock portfolio lately? It’s a good bet it’s racked up solid gains for the year.

Wall Street has taken stock investors on a mostly smooth, record-shattering ride in 2017. The major stock indexes made double-digit gains for the year, led by Apple, Facebook and other technology stocks.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, the broadest measure of the stock market, had its best year since 2013. “This would go in the category of stellar year, with very little volatility in the market and pullbacks that were essentially minor,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial.

Several factors kept the market on an upward grind for most of the year and repeatedly drove stock indexes to all-time highs. The global economy rebounded, while the U.S. economy and job market continued to strengthen, which helped drive strong corporate earnings growth.

Investors also drew encouragement from the Trump administration’s and Republican-led Congress’ push to slash corporate taxes, roll back regulations and enact other pro-business policies. Congress passed the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul bill, which reduces corporate taxes from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, last week.

The S&P 500 index finished the year with a gain of 19.4 per cent, more than double its increase in 2016. The index has notched 62 record highs this year.

Including dividends, the S&P 500’s total return was 21.8 per cent, as of late Friday.

That means if you invested $1,000 in an S&P 500 index fund at the beginning of the year you will wind up with about $1,218 at the end of the year.

Other major market indexes also were on course to deliver solid gains. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 25.1 per cent. The 30-company average set 71 all-time highs as it sped from just under 20,000 points to past the 24,000 mark.

The Nasdaq composite did even better and climbed 28.2 per cent. The tech-heavy index blew past the 6,000-point mark for the first time in April.

Small-company stocks, which trounced the rest of the market in 2016, got a boost this year as investors bet that the companies would be big beneficiaries of a corporate tax cut bill. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks gained 13.1 per cent.

The market’s gains have been broad, with seven of the 11 sectors in the S&P 500 having double-digit gains, led by technology, which soared 36.9 per cent.