Fairness markets continued their uneven climb upward this 12 months with the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the S&P 500, which has a hefty know-how element, leaping 1.8% and 1.1%, respectively, whilst fourth quarter earnings continued to tilt detrimental and a rising variety of corporations introduced layoffs in anticipation of an financial contraction. For the reason that begin of the 12 months, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and extra not too long ago IBM have introduced job cuts.