LONDON - Investors look to have started 2021 looks much like the end of 2020 -- stocks have resumed their ascent as traders cling to hopes for a speedy rollout of COVID-19 vaccines even as a surge in new cases heralds tighter restrictions and economic damage.
Some global hedge fund investors are going into 2021 optimistic about a speedy snap-back from the economic challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dump the dollar! Buy emerging markets! Stay sustainable! These are among the consensus trades investment banks and asset managers reckon will dominate financial markets in 2021.
Last December, the first infection with the new coronavirus was reported to the World Health Organization. Twelve months later, as the charts below show, global financial markets have been on a roller coaster like no other.
All hopes for next year - everything from stock market returns to restaurant bookings - are bound up with the view that vaccines will gradually restore normality to a pandemic-ravaged world.
U.S. stocks closed 2020 on a strong note, and many investors are betting the party will continue after a tumultuous year that marked both the end of the longest bull market and the shortest-lived bear market ever.
Oil prices are unlikely to mount much of a recovery in 2021 as a new coronavirus variant and related travel restrictions threaten already weakened fuel demand, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday.
NEW YORK (Reuters) -The year 2020 was a wild one for Wall Street, bookended by the end of the longest bull market in history with the battering of equities by the COVID-19 shutdowns, and a bungee-cord rebound on hopes for economic recovery that resulted in the shortest bear market on record.
Dividend payments to investors in the S&P 500 rose to a new record in 2020, despite the challenge posed by the coronavirus pandemic, according to research from S&P Global.
When 2020 dawned, the global economy had just notched its 10th straight year of uninterrupted growth, a streak most economists and government finance officials expected to persist for years ahead in a 21st Century version of the "Roaring '20s."
The U.S. dollar recovered after falling to its lowest level since April 2018 on Monday, as surging coronavirus cases undermined bullish sentiment that had begun the new year across global markets and pushed investors into riskier currencies, such as the Chinese yuan and the euro.