Investors never have a shortage of things to worry about, but in 2024 it really boiled down to just two: Treasury yields and tech stocks. Markets rode the wave of both factors, mostly up but occasionally down, through the year, and likely face the same fate in 2025 as both serve as vital catalysts for the fate of risk assets, according to a DataTrek Research analysis. “We continue to believe that U.S./global stocks are in a classic mid-cycle market (i.e., no recession at hand), and the relevant lessons from 2024 are that 10-year Treasury yields and Big Tech stocks will share the stage as costars in 2025,” Nicholas Colas, DataTrek’s co-founder, wrote in his daily market note Friday. “Barring an exogenous shock that either creates a recession or materially increases the probability of an economic contraction, we expect 2025 will look very much like 2023 and 2024,” he added. On yields, the past year saw peaks and valleys , sometimes in usual places. All told, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield started the year low, burst higher amid signs that inflation would be more stubborn than expected, then tumbled in the summer as inflation fears subsided and the unemployment rate rose to a level that kindled recession fears. September, though, brought another spike after the Federal Reserve cut its key borrowing rate , with another leg higher after the November election. From a market view, Colas points out that increased yields coincided with strong large-cap stock performance, while declines saw small-caps shine. US10Y .SPXIN 1Y line 10-year yield vs. the S & P 500 “This relationship is not a coincidence, and in our view, it is the key to thinking about global and U.S. market cap-based equity allocations for 2025,” Colas wrote. “Global investors need to see U.S. rates decline to have the confidence required to place riskier bets on small caps or rest of world stocks. Without that backdrop, they will stick to U.S. large caps since they have a long run, Tech-driven, secular growth story supporting them.” Tech, of course, was a major story in the past year as Nvidia and a host of similar names surged on hopes that artificial intelligence would remake the global economy and fuel a new wave of productivity growth. When that trade got tired and overdone, the broader market suffered. However, Nvidia , which has soared more than 200% over the past year, and its cohorts in the Magnificent 7 have more than carried the load. In fact, the S & P 500 would have been up just 4.1% in 2023 and 6.3% last year were it not for the seven market leaders, according to DataTrek. Instead, the index posted price returns of 24.2% and 23.3%. “Since the beginning of 2023, Big Tech has been the most important driver of annual return differentials between U.S. large caps and both domestic small caps and rest of world stock indices,” Colas said. With that track record, “these 7 stocks will almost certainly determine: Whether U.S. large caps can beat small caps/rest of world stocks once again” and “what sort of return (good/bad/meh) the S & P generates this year,” he added.
Only two things have mattered and will matter for stocks, DataTrek says