The so-called Santa Rally we discussed at the beginning of December ended up coming through in grand fashion at the end of the year. In the last two weeks of 2013, from December 17 through the New Year, the S&P 500 rose by nearly 4 percent, compensating for a desultory beginning to the month. All told, the index was up 2.64 percent in the month, for a customary winning December.
That meant that for the year, the S&P rose by 29.6 percent. You have to go back to 1997, in the early days of the high-tech bubble, to find a year that did better. Other than two years in the go-go Nineties, the S&P hadn't had that strong a year since 1975.
The scorecard for the other indexes: the Dow Jones was up 26.5 percent in 2013, and the Nasdaq was up 38.3 percent. The small-cap Russell 2000, which is making a name for itself as another key equity index, finished up 37 percent.
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