The Credit Boom

One sign of a hot economy: Consumer borrowing rose in November by the largest monthly amount in 16 years, the Federal Reserve said yesterday. Total consumer credit increased by a solid $28 billion in November to a record high of $3.83 trillion. The annual growth rate was 8.8 percent.

Credit-card borrowing powered the increase. Revolving credit, which is mostly made up of credit-card loans, expanded to an annual rate of 13.3 percent in November, the fastest pace since last December and well above the 9.9 percent gain in October.

Nonrevolving credit, which covers loans for education and cars, rose at an annual rate of 7.2 percent in November. That's the fastest pace for that figure since October 2016.

Tough Year for Carmakers

Last year was a banner year for the stock market, but not so much for automakers. The seven-year winning streak that began after the recession in 2010 fell short in 2017 with sales down 1.8 percent compared to 2016. All told, the year saw 17.2 million vehicles sold.

The full-year results for individual automakers:

• Subaru, up 5.3 percent
• Nissan, up 1.9 percent
• Honda, up 0.2 percent
• Toyota, down 0.6 percent
• Ford, down 1.1 percent
• General Motors, down 1.3 percent
• Fiat Chrysler, down 8.2 percent
• Hyundai-Kia, down 8.9 percent

December's Jobs Report

The pace of hiring slowed in December, with employers adding 148,000 jobs, the lowest number since September, the Labor Department said this morning. That brought employment gains for the year to 2.1 million. The headline unemployment rate remained at 4.1 percent.

Employers added better than 2 million jobs for the seventh straight year in 2017. It is only the second time on record—the other being in the 1990s—when the economy has produced jobs at that pace for that long.

An unexpected loss of 20,000 retail positions during the holiday season held back the December jobs number. The biggest gains came from health care (31,000), construction (30,000) and manufacturing (25,000). Bars and restaurants added 25,000, while professional and business services grew by 19,000.

Sector Scorecard for 2017

Wrapping up our scorecard for 2017, here is how each of the industry sectors performed in 2017, courtesy of Bespoke Investing:

• Technology up 34.3 percent
• Materials up 24.01 percent
• Industrials up 23.97 percent
• Consumer discretionary up 22.8 percent
• Financials up 22.0 percent
• Health care up 21.8 percent
• Consumer staples up 13.0 percent
• Utilities up 12.0 percent
• Energy down 0.9 percent
• Telecom down 11.8 percent

2017's Winners and Losers

The S&P 500 index ended 2017 up 19 percent, after closing at a fresh record high more than 60 times over the course of the year. Here are the index's biggest winners for the year:

• NRG Energy,  up 132 percent
• Align Technology, up 131 percent
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals, up 103 percent
• Wynn Resorts, up 95 percent
• Boeing, up 89 percent

And the biggest losers:

• Envision Healthcare,  down 45 percent
• Scana,  down 46 percent
• Under Armour, Class A down 50 percent, Class C down 47 percent
• Range Resources, down 50 percent
• Baker Hughes, a GE Company, down 51 percent

Scorecard for 2017

Happy new year, and a fond farewell to 2017. For most investors, 2017 was the best year for stocks since 2013. Here are the final numbers for the year:

• The Nasdaq composite was the biggest winner among the major indexes, with a gain of 28.2 percent. 
• The Dow Jones industrial average rose by 25.1 percent. 
• The large-company Standard & Poor's 500 increased 19.4 percent.
• The relative laggard was the small-cap Russell 2000. It gained 13.1 percent, which was less than its 19.5 percent return from 2016.

Thoughts for the New Year

"Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier.'" ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” ~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce