Hi hopes for 2024 on Wall Street. From Marketplace, I'm Nancy Marshall Genser in for

David Brancaccio. Happy New Year. U.S. markets are closed today for New Year's Day. They reopen tomorrow at 9.30 a.m. Wall Street time.

Many analysts predict 2024 will be a relatively good year for businesses and the economy.

Expectations are for a rising S&P 500 index, falling inflation, lower interest rates,

and an economy that is slowing but resilient. In short, they say the Federal Reserve is likely to achieve its so-called soft landing.

Marketplace's Nova Safo is here with more high vote. Hi Nova.

Good morning. So why are economists so much more

optimistic this year than last? Yeah, what a difference a year makes right?

2023 started with a lot of gloom and doom.

Many economists thought a recession was more likely than not

because they thought the Federal Reserve would have to tip the economy into one

in order to tame inflation. That was a widely held view. Well what's happened since?

Inflation has fallen dramatically. We started 2023 at 6.5 percent. We're now at

about 3%.

That's not far from the Fed's target range, which is 2%.

All that progress, and we have not had a recession.

And that's why you're seeing so much optimism now on Nancy as

2024 gets started. And why do you think analysts believe that this positive

trend will continue? Well the labor market has remained strong not as strong as

earlier in the post-pandemic recovery but there hasn't been a spike in layoffs.

People are still spending which is powering the economy but inflation is coming down because people are also being

picky about their spending. So at the moment it looks very much like the Fed is going to

...