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Fireworks explode in Times Square on New Year's Eve on January 1, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by )
Stocks finished higher on the first day of trading in 2018, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting records to open the year.
Markets will be seeking to repeat the successes of 2017 - a year in which the S&P 500 gained in each of the 12 months.
Here's Monday's scoreboard:
- Dow: 24,818.00 (+0.40%)
- S&P 500: 2,695.58 (+0.82%)
- Nasdaq: 7,006.90 (+1.51%)
What happened:
- The world's hottest investment product is showing signs of slowing down: Exchange-traded-fund closures hit a record for a second straight year in 2017, according to Citigroup data, signaling the ETF market is maturing as traders shift how they're using the funds.
- Oil is holding the $60 per barrel mark as anti-government protests in Iran provide support.
- Energy giant BP expects a long term 'Trump bump' from the new US tax plan - but it's taking a $1.5 billion hit for now
- Warren Buffett has won his $1 million bet against the hedge fund industry
In other news…
- Peter Thiel's Founders Fund made a bet on bitcoin that's now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of bitcoin spiked on the news.
- Millennials did a terrible job picking stocks in 2017, with six of Robinhood's top 10 traded stocks ending the year lower than where they began.
- Steve Cohen's new hedge fund will reportedly have an army of investigators to snoop on traders' chats and calls.
- The cofounder of Ripple is now one of the world's richest people after the company's cryptocurrency, XRP, gained more than 37,000%
Finally, here's what 12 Wall Street prof are predicting for the stock market in 2018.