The 2019 stock market opened with an S&P 500 that flirted with its worst closing month of the year since 1931 – it slipped by 9.6 percent in December.

But a large part of the year was marked by a Federal Reserve that seemed determined to raise interest rates, despite U.S. President Donald Trump tweeting for rate cuts. And the end result – three rate cuts in a year – was not what some market observers expected.

"Wow! What a difference! I mean when we thought of 2019, we expected rate hikes galore," Matt Cheslock, an equity trader at Virtu Financial told CGTN.

Fed's rate cuts helped markets hit record highs again this year, with the S&P 500 currently on track for possibly its best year since 2013. At the time of writing, the index has risen by nearly 29 percent for 2019.

Stocks like Apple and Microsoft were driving gains on all three indices Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500.

"That (rate cuts) definitely was the catalyst to spark the market to a new high, earnings weren't expected to be phenomenal so the Fed definitely helped in the second half you know spark some of these rallies,” Cheslock added.

Key IPOs in 2019

Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in 2019 were aplenty, with the Nasdaq alone seeing almost 200 of them.

As for Chinese firms, among the big ones in 2019 were DouYu – or Fighting Fish in Mandarin – China's biggest live-streaming platform and Luckin Coffee – a Chinese rival for Starbucks.

Another two huge IPOs happened outside of New York, namely Saudi Aramco in Riyadh and Alibaba's Asian float in Hong Kong.

The flexible workspace company WeWork had its IPO pulled after investors said the company was seeking too high a valuation.

"It was a really tough year for IPOs, and it all, of course, culminated in the disaster that was WeWork, which I'm glad we never got. We were thrilled about that. It turned out to be a lot of smoke and mirrors," said Quattro M. Securities stock trader Peter Tuchman.

Among the biggest and best known U.S. companies to come to market in 2019 were: Beyond Meat – the plant-based alternative meat company; Chewy – the pet-supply company; Fiverr – the Israeli freelance database; Levi Strauss – denim clothing company; Peloton – the tech exercise bike; Pinterest – the digital scrapbook; and Lyft and Uber – the ride hailing companies whose shares are worth far less than at their debut.

IPOs in 2020 to have better fundamentals: TJM Investors

"I think the IPOs that come next year are going to be more sound, have better fundamentals and hopefully more of them will have a better earnings history already documented than some of what we've seen in the last 18 months," said Tim Anderson of TJM Investors

So, what of 2020? It's likely one of the biggest IPOs of the year will be the tech-based accommodation website Airbnb.

2020 is also a presidential election year but the market appears to have brushed off a lot of the negativity and is trading on fundamentals that seem strong – the banking giant JP Morgan Chase is predicting the S&P 500 will rise by eight percent in 2020.

"U.S.-China, Brexit, interest rates, elections, impeachment... all these different things that were there three month, six months, nine months ago, are still here so that's going to add an interesting spin to our market,” said Jonathan Corpina, senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners.