NEW YORK—U.S. stock investors could not be more eager to turn the page on 2022, a brutal year dominated by market-punishing Federal Reserve rate hikes designed to tamp down the steepest inflation in 40 years.
The S&P 500 is down nearly 20 percent year-to-date with only a few trading days left in 2022, on pace for its biggest calendar-year drop since 2008. The carnage has been even more severe for the Nasdaq Composite, which had tumbled by nearly 34 percent so far for the year.
