Wall Street hit record high after record high in 2023, a year investors had feared would be a washout as elevated interest rates threatened to grind the economy to a halt, media reports said. However, a resilient job market, robust consumer spending and easing inflation kept investor confidence high, helping propel all three indexes to double-digit gains.

S&P 500, the broadest measure of the US stock market, closed 0.28 per cent lower on Friday, leaving it just under 30 points away from a record-high close. It gained 24 per cent this year. It also notched its ninth-straight weekly gain—the longest streak since January 2004. This year has been much kinder to the market than last: The benchmark index fell by about 20 per cent in 2022.