Favorable results for equity and mixed results for fixed income markets during the first month of the year. The main equity indexes, the S&P 500, ACWI* and NASDAQ, accumulated returns of 1.59%, 0.53% and 1.02%, respectively, during the period, thus continuing the dynamism of year-end; this was not the case for the fixed-income markets, whose main indexes closed without major changes despite showing high volatility during the month.

The fourth quarter corporate reports of S&P 500 companies announced to date slightly exceeded analysts' expectations. In their annual comparison, sales increased 3.9%, favored by the health care and consumer discretionary sectors, while profits increased 2.9%, with the industrial and financial sectors being the best performers. Also noteworthy was Facebook's report, now META, whose 25% increase in sales took the company's market capitalization to 1.22 trillion dollars, an increase of 196 billion dollars (+20.3%) in a single day and setting a record for the largest intraday gain in value.

And while corporate reports were better than expected, surprisingly strong data came from the economic side as 353,000 new jobs were created in the U.S. economy during the month of January, significantly exceeding all economists' expectations and bringing the unemployment rate to 3.7%. This report confirms the resilience of the labor market and reduces the possibility of a rate cut during March; however, the market continues to expect ~5 rate cuts in the year to conclude 2024 with a benchmark rate of 4.10%.

Finally, in Mexico, the slowdown in the last quarter of the year led the economy to expand slightly less than expected, ending 2023 GDP growth at 3.1%, an increase driven mainly by the strong performance of the industrial sector (3.6%) and the services sector (2.9%). We think economic growth will remain solid during 2024 reaching levels between 2 and 2.5%, driven by the still resilient U.S. economy, government spending and the implementation of new relocation projects.