SPY's 17% Gain in 2024 Is Hardly Exceptional

The S&P 500 ticked up slightly in Monday trading after rising to record highs last week. 

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) is sporting a 17.5% year-to-date increase. That's an incredible gain for just over six months. 

But the ETF is still far off 2023's full-year 26.3% return or 2021's 28.7% spike.

There have been several instances of 20%-plus returns for SPY over the past decade—five between 2013 and 2023.

The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) is also up more than 17% since Jan. 1. 

That makes 2024 a great year for investors but far from extraordinary. 

Other major indexes were mixed on Monday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling but the tech-focused Nasdaq, which also hit a new record last week, rising a few fractions of a percentage point. 

Broad stock market indexes were little changed midday Monday as investors face a week that will include a handful of big bank earnings and more data on the state of U.S. inflation.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 all hovered in positive territory with less than two hours of trading left in the day, while crude oil and gold prices were down about 1%.

Big gainers in the ETF space are the GraniteShares 2X Long AMD Daily ETF (AMDL), up 6.6%, and the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares ETF (SOXL), with a 5.9% gain.

Source: etf.com

Today's most active ETF was the Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2X Shares (TSLL) with nearly 70 million shares trading on a less-than 1% gain in the price.

In typical summertime fashion, when trading volume is lower, the markets might experience increased volatility toward the end of the week. That's due to the release of the latest Consumer Price Index inflation data coming before the markets open on Thursday, following by quarterly earnings reports from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup before the market opens on Friday.