Throughout 2024, the stock market has remained in a solid uptrend that has lifted most styles and sizes. With three trading days remaining in October, the S&P 500 was up 22.1% year to date on a capital-appreciation basis. The Nasdaq, which lagged the broad market index for most of the year, is now ahead with a 23.7% gain. And the blue-chip DJIA is up 12.5%, with its deep lag attributable mainly to struggling component stocks including Boeing, Intel, and Nike While the S&P 500's rise across 2024 has been punctuated by some selling jags, the index mainly has been in climbing mode. The S&P's trading year 2024 started with a run from the 4,740 level on January 1 to around 5,250 by the end of March. After a down April, the index climbed from the 5,020s on 5/1/24 to the 5,670s by mid-July. The index made a low in the 5,180s early in August and a higher low around 5,400 early in September. The index mainly has risen since then, hitting its all-time closing high in the 5,860s on 10/18/24. The index has remained above its 50-day simple moving average (SMA) for nearly the entire year; and dips below that trendline have been remarkably short. The index first broke its 50-day SMA on 4/12/24 but was back above the intermediate-term trendline about three weeks later on 5/3/24. The next breach in the 50-day SMA occurred around 5,520 on 7/31/24 and lasted two weeks until 8/14/24. The lower high from mid-August could not hold, and the 50-day again failed at the higher low from early September. In this case, the 50-day breach lasted less than a week, from 9/4/24 to 9/10/24. Even with some mid-October churn, the S&P 500 currently has a 140-point cushion over its 50-day SMA.

The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the current period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as vaccines and AI) and services (such as Zoom calls) and moving into new markets, the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. The current high level of the U.S. dollar relative to currencies around the world attests to the confidence that global investors have in the durable and innovative U.S. economy.

Based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, Boston Scientific is a developer, manufacturer, and marketer of medical devices used in a range of interventional medical specialties, including interventional cardiology, peripheral interventions, vascular surgery, electrophysiology, oncology, endoscopy, urology, gynecology, and neuromodulation. The company is a component of the S&P 500.

Stocks were mixed on Thursday, with the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 higher, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling back once again. Tesla's consensus-beating results and guidance powered the Nasdaq, while disappointing results from IBM dragged on the Dow. The Nasdaq was up 0.76%, the S&P 500 gained 0.21%, and the Dow fell back by 0.33%.