The S&P 500 Index finished at an all-time high for the first time in two years on Friday, marking a crucial milestone in the resurgence of the US stock market. It’s been a dizzying stretch for equities, triggered by falling inflation and the possibility that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in 2024. Over the past two years investors have faced the largest ground war in Europe since World War II, the fastest inflation since the 1980s and the highest borrowing costs since the turn of the millennium — a trio of forces that pushed the American equities benchmark into a bear market in June 2022. Yet stocks ... (full story)