Wall Street closes out 2019 by adding to year's big gains


U.S. stocks gained Tuesday on the last day of trading in 2019, capping a year of huge gains.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite all rose by about 0.3 percent on Tuesday. The S&P 500 gained 28.9 percent in 2019. Adding dividends, the blue-chip index had a total return of 31.5 percent. The Nasdaq rose by 35.3 percent, boosted by increases of 48 percent by technology stocks.
The gains were the biggest for both indexes since 2013. The Dow gained 22.3 percent. All three of the main U.S. indexes posted a string of records in a year-end rally, as a "phase one" deal aiming to de-escalate the U.S.-China trade war lifted Wall Street's mood. The market is closed Wednesday for New Year's Day.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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