Page 24 - ATODAY

A24

BUSINESSMonday 11 January 2016

Wall Street Review: Why US stocks ended 2015 mostly flat

ALEX VEIGA more.” Weak company earnings, cember. quickly and thereby stunt

AP Business Writer The market got 2015 off to largely due to the strong In the weeks that followed, the economy’s growth.

The stock market took in- a slow start as investors wor- dollar and falling oil pric- the S&P 500 inched back “It really was central banks

vestors for a wild ride in ried about falling crude oil es, didn’t do much for the into positive territory, leav- looming large over the

2015, but in the end it was prices, flat earnings growth market’s confidence. ing the Dow as the only market,” Baele said. “The

a trip to nowhere. and when and how quickly By August, the anxiety had major market indicator market had a fair amount

Despite veering between the Federal Reserve would deepened and the market negative for the year. of fear that the Fed rais-

Including dividends, the ing rates was a risk to the

S&P 500 is on track to return market. It’s turned around

2 percent, following a re- now.”

turn of 13.7 percent in 2014.

“There was a lot of news CORRECTION ARRIVES

that kept hitting the market The bull market had

and the market kept shrug- racked up six years of an-

ging it all off and hung in nual gains by the time the

there,” said J.J. Kinahan, calendars turned to 2015.

chief strategist at TD Ameri- The last time it had a cor-

trade. “I’d say, given all rection was 2011. Histori-

that the market faced this cally, that’s an unusually

year, it was pretty strong.” long time for the market to

These were some of the go without a meaningful

key factors driving markets pullback. That plus a string

in 2015: of record highs in late 2014

led many to think the mar-

Trader Peter Tuchman, foreground right, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The WAITING FOR THE FED ket was overdue a drop.
stock market took investors for a wild ride in 2015, but in the end it was a trip to nowhere. Wall Street watched few The long-awaited correc-
things more closely this tion finally arrived in Au-
(AP Photo/Richard Drew) year than the Federal Re- gust. Late in the month
serve. Traders had been indexes dropped sharply
record highs and the steep- begin raising interest rates. dropped sharply. The three predicting early on that the as investors worried that a
est dive in four years, the By May, the major indexes major U.S. indexes went central bank would begin slowdown in China’s huge
stock market is on track to were hitting new highs. into a correction, com- raising its benchmark inter- economy could spread to
end the year essentially flat. Even the Nasdaq bested its monly defined as a loss of est rate as early as March. other countries.
That means if you invested dot-com high-water mark at least 10 percent from When that didn’t happen, Yet after an 11 percent
in a fund that tracks the set in March 2000. a recent peak, for the first investors turned their focus plunge between Aug. 17
Standard & Poor’s 500 in- The market didn’t stay in time in four years. to June, only to be disap- and 25, and another, less
dex, you have little to show milestone territory for long, That slide didn’t last long, pointed again. steep drop in late Septem-
for the past 12 months. though. either. Eventually, in Decem- ber, the market began to
ber, the Fed took action. struggle higher. By late No-
It nudged its benchmark vember it had recouped
overnight borrowing rate all the losses from its late
higher, its first increase in summer swoon.
interest rates in nearly a de- Once investors deter-
cade.

“It’s been mildly disappoint- Worries about slowing Within several weeks, The Fed made it clear that mined that China’s slow-

ing,” said Michael Baele, growth in China and else- the market had mostly it was expressing a vote down would not spillover

managing director at the where gave reason for the bounced back. The Nas- of confidence in the U.S. to the U.S. and European

Private Client Reserve Fed to pause and for inves- daq composite returned economy by doing so and economies, “then we had

at U.S. Bank. “Any time that tors to fret, even as the U.S. to positive territory for the that future increases would a very rapid recovery from

you come in toward the economy continued to year, while the Dow aver- be gradual. That helped that very sharp decline,”

end of the year close to flat create jobs and consum- age and S&P 500 remained reassure investors that the Jeremy Zirin, chief equities

you always want a little bit er confidence improved. slightly in the red until De- Fed wouldn’t raise rates too strategist at UBS Wealth

Management Americas.

Report: EARNINGS DRAG

Holiday shopping online spurred by mobile sales A big reason why the mar-
ket finished flat in 2015 is

MAE ANDERSON creasingly comfortable cember rose 13 percent to lets jumped 59 percent to that company earnings
AP Technology Writer with shopping on smart- $69.08 billion from $61.29 $12.65 billion, well above growth has also been
NEW YORK (AP) — It was the phones as screen sizes get billion last year, slightly short the 47 percent rise com- largely flat.
year smartphones saved larger and shopping apps of the 14 percent rise com- Score was expecting. That was due primarily to
Santa. get better. Score, based in Reston, Mobile commerce ac- the impact of falling oil
As expected, numbers out “I believe that we’ve seen Va., was expecting. counted for 18 percent of prices on energy sector
late last week from research a paradigm shift in 2016 Spending on desktops rose total online spending, up earnings. Also, the rapid
firm comScore confirmed where the future of retail 6 percent to $56.43 billion, from 13 percent last year. appreciation of the dollar
mobile shopping, which will increasingly be defined short of comScore’s expec- Cyber Monday, Nov. 30, constrained earnings for
includes smartphones and by consumers’ behavior on tations of an 8 percent rise was once again the top companies that do a lot of
tablets, jumped in Novem- mobile,” said comScore to $58.3 billion. spending day of the year business overseas.
ber and December, spur- chairman emeritus Gian But mobile commerce with more than $2 billion in As a result, earnings growth
ring on holiday retail sales Fulgoni. helped make up some of desktop buying for the sec- for companies in the S&P
this year. Total online spending dur- that shortfall. Shopping ond year in a row.q 500 index went from 7 per-
Online shoppers are in- ing November and De- on smartphones and tab- cent in 2014 to essentially
zero in 2015.q