ISSUE II
March 2024
THE OFFICIAL RAMAZ UPPER SCHOOL BUSINESS INVESTMENT JOURNAL YTD:
NASDAQ NASDAQ
3.95% 14.78%
S&P 500
5.56%
DJIA
0.87%
NIKKEI
3.26%
OIL
The S&P hits all-time highs: what caused this success and will it continue? Elliot Weiss, ‘26
12.32%
GOLD
7.30%
BTC
67.7%
Contents WHAT'S NEWS Stock Market
CanThe Tesla Move Higher? S&P has hit all-time highs: what caused this success and will it continue? (1) Nvidia’s huge year (2) How have fourth quarter earnings reports affected the market (3) A Children’s Place: down 52% in a matter of days (3) Economics The minimum wage debate (4) Interest rates: what are they? (4) Business and Sports Lewis Hamilton leaves Mercedes to sign with Ferrari (5) Cryptocurrency
Recently, the stock market has been on a roll, hitting an all-time high and completing a large recovery from the bear market of 2022. At the time of this writing, the S&P 500 is up 30% since the beginning of 2023, and 7% since the beginning of the year. This comes at a time when there seems to be more risk factors than ever in the global stock market, including inflation and the wars in Ukraine and Israel. Given all of this, how is it that the market is doing so well, and will this rally continue through 2024? While there are many reasons for the recent stock market rally, the two that stand out are emerging technology in artificial intelligence (AI), and the prospect of central banks cutting interest rates. In November 2022, AI startup OpenAI released a new product, ChatGPT. This began what some have called an AI ‘gold rush’, with many companies, like Microsoft, Google, and Meta releasing AI products. This technology revolution has majorly benefited many companies, with the largest example being, the THE RAM STREET JOURNAL
relatively unknown computer chip company, Nvidia. In addition to making computer chips for video games, Nvidia now dominates the market for chips used in training AI models. Since October 2022, Nvidia’s stock price is up 600%. In their last reported earnings, their stock went up around 15%, causing the tech-focused NASDAQ index to increase by 2.5% percent. Like all advancements in technology, this is all giving muchneeded optimism to investors, who are now willing to take larger risks on expensive stocks, hoping for outsized returns. Whereas AI is a relatively tangible factor affecting markets, the other major contributor, is a lot more abstract. Markets are now hoping for the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, to cut interest rates. To understand this, we have to look back to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. When the world shut down in March, 2020, there was widespread fear of an economic collapse. In order to solve this, The Federal Reserve,
Bitcoin spikes past $47,000 to record highs (6) What is an NFT? (6) Cryptocurrency mining (7) How will the new Apple Vision Pro affect the Metaverse (8) Real Estate China’s property crisis causes global ripple (9) Why billionaire sports owners are snapping up so much real estate (9) Entrepreneurship Giving Magic interview (10) Startup Spotlight: a look into Intuitive (11) History of Finance How World War II transformed America's economic landscape (12) The evolution of capitalism and its impact on economies (13) Environment How ESG ratings are revolutionizing the business world (13) The war in Israel's effect on the Environmental Stock Market (14)
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