NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 17:41 ET — After-hours
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended Tuesday slightly lower as investors parsed Federal Reserve minutes and trimmed exposure into year-end. The blue-chip index fell 94.87 points, or 0.2%, to 48,367.06.
The soft finish comes with one more U.S. trading session left in 2025, a period when reduced liquidity can magnify small shifts in positioning. For the Dow, which is price-weighted, moves in higher-priced components can have an outsized impact on the index.
Trading stayed subdued in a holiday-thinned market, with many investors already winding down activity for the year, the Associated Press reported.
Even so, the Dow and S&P 500 were still tracking their eighth straight month of gains, and the Dow hit a record closing high last week, a Reuters report showed. Some investors are also watching the Santa Claus rally, a seasonal pattern typically defined as the last five trading days of the year plus the first two of January.
Within the Dow, declines in Goldman Sachs and Home Depot were among the biggest drags earlier in the session, with other components such as Nike, IBM and Cisco also weighing, MarketWatch reported.
Boeing provided a bright spot after the Pentagon announced an $8.6 billion contract tied to the F-15 Israel Program. Boeing was the top Dow performer Tuesday afternoon, up about 2%, according to Investopedia.
Outside the Dow, deal news in artificial intelligence helped support pockets of the market. Meta Platforms said it would acquire Manus, and a source said the transaction values the Singapore-based startup at $2 billion to $3 billion.
Financial stocks also digested fresh bank headlines. Citigroup said its board approved the sale of its Russian unit to Renaissance Capital and flagged a pre-tax loss of about $1.2 billion, largely tied to currency translation adjustments—an accounting impact from converting results into dollars.
Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, said the late-year pullback looked like “a healthy rebalancing of allocations” rather than an “emotionally driven sell-off.” Investors are also looking ahead to the Fed’s next meeting on Jan. 27-28, with markets currently expecting policymakers to hold rates steady. Reuters
In after-hours trading, March E-mini Dow futures slipped about 0.1%. Futures are derivatives—contracts that trade beyond the cash-session close and reflect expectations for where the index may open next.
The broader backdrop remains a market near record levels after a strong run in 2025, with investors increasingly focused on whether earnings and rate policy can justify elevated valuations into 2026. U.S. stocks are ending the year close to highs, with the S&P 500 up about 17% for 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported.
