A Skewed Sense of Growth
A portion of the S&P 500 index vastly outperformed the index as a whole, giving the impression that the economy had been thriving in 2020. This is misleading when you consider the fact that stocks from the Information Technology, Consumer Discretionary and Communication Services sectors make up 28%, 13% and 11% (roughly half) of the entire index respectively, and each had a higher than average performance, skewing the whole index upwards.