Trading results for 15 January 2025

As expected, Wednesday was a turbulent and, one might even say, tempestuous day. There was simply too much happening for investors to sit still, watching calmly from the sidelines. Fortunately, everything that happened on Wednesday was positive, giving market sentiment a strong boost.

First of all, investors were very apprehensive about upcoming consumer inflation data. And their fears of rising inflation were well founded, since that is exactly what we had observed in recent months. To the relief of many, however, inflation slowed in December from 0.3% to 0.2% month-over-month and from 3.3% to 3.2% year-over-year.

While investors welcomed these figures, the earnings reports from leading US banks, released before the market opened, generated even greater enthusiasm. For example, the largest US bank, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, +1.97%), reported a record annual profit of $58 billion for 2024. Other banks, including Wells Fargo Company (WFC, +6.69%) and Citigroup (+6.49%), reported similar results.

Although the banking sector was the top performer for the day, the rally sparked by the banks’ positive earnings reports drove widespread optimism, prompting investors to buy stocks across all sectors. By the end of the day, every sector had closed in the green. At the same time, the major US indexes posted strong gains, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA-30) up 1.65%, the broad-market S&P 500 rising 1.83%,and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite surging nearly 2.5% (2.45%).

Naturally, on such a hype-driven day, the ITS family of indexes also saw significant gains, even though neither index includes bank stocks. The ITS World index (ITSW) rose 1.58%, while the ITS Shariah index (ITSS) enjoyed even stronger gains, up 2.04% on the day.

Moreover, growth from a sectoral perspective mirrored that of US markets, with gains on Wednesday across nearly all the stocks included in the indexes. Of the 50 stocks included in the ITSW index, for example, only 6 ended the day in negative territory. And only two of the six were American companies: Procter & Gamble (PG, -0.06%) and UnitedHealth (UNH, -0.06%), which posted negligible losses and had very little impact on overall performance. On the other hand, China’s gaming giant NetEase (NTES, +8.22%) and the unsinkable Tesla (TSLA, +8.04%), both of which rose over 8%, made significant contributions, driving the indexes upward after a brief correction.

Tesla was also among the best-performing stocks in the ITS Shariah Index, joined not by Chinese companies but by the leading medical equipment manufacturer Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG, +7.65%), whose stock also rose by nearly 8%.

Whether this upward momentum will continue following what we saw on Wednesday is difficult to say. However, if US companies deliver fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 results as strong as those reported by the banks, that could undoubtedly provide a strong impetus for further growth, propelling markets towards new all-time highs.