Stocks post biggest 1-year gain since 2013
The Nasdaq and S&P 500 rose 35.2% and 28.9%, respectively, for the year.
The three major U.S. stock market indexes in 2019 saw some of their strongest annual gains of the decade, closing out a roller coaster ride that drove equities to record highs and lows during the year.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq and the benchmark S&P 500 rose 35.2% and 28.9%, respectively, for the year, marking their biggest annual gains since 2013. The Dow climbed 22.3%, its best year since 2017.
Shares of Apple and Microsoft were among those that pushed the Dow higher, gaining 86% and 55%, respectively. The outperforming stocks also accounted for nearly 15% of the S&P 500's annual climb, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
![PHOTO: Stock traders wear New Year's 2020 party glasses at the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2019. Wall Street could close 2019 with back-to-back daily losses in a year that the U.S. posted the largest market gains since 2013.](https://s.abcnews.com/images/Business/stock_market_2019_main_191231_hpMain_20191231-163611.jpg)
The indexes spent most of the last trading session of the year wavering between gains and losses but ended in positive territory. The Dow closed at 28,538.44, up 0.27% on the day, while the S&P closed at 3,230.78, up 0.29%. The Nasdaq rose 0.3% to close at 8,972.60.
The gains were modest, but it was a stark difference from last year when a government shutdown and trade war tensions roiled markets into the new year.
The S&P 500, which includes many of the biggest American companies, has had a total return of about 257%, or about 13.6% annually, since the beginning of the decade, Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at the S&P Dow Jones Indices, wrote on Twitter. That's higher than the average annual total return, including dividends, of about 10.3% since the 1920s, he said.
Those calculations did not include figures at Tuesday's close.
ABC News' Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.