January 2025 Market Review: Key Insights and Highlights

President Trump began his term with a record-setting 26 executive orders, signaling his readiness to implement immediate and significant structural changes. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), energy, immigration, tariffs and technology were some of the key areas of focus.

The U.S. stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 TR Index, continued to rise in January despite delivering over 20% returns in consecutive years. As I write this post, just before the market closes on January 31st, the S&P 500 appears slated to finish the month in the high 2% range. Annualizing that (which I don’t recommend doing) implies another year over 20% for the S&P 500.