NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 10:42 ET
- U.S. stocks opened the final week of 2025 lower as heavyweight tech shares pulled back.
- The S&P 500 stayed within about 1% of the 7,000 mark, while markets brace for thin holiday trading.
- Investors are watching Fed meeting minutes and jobless claims in a week shortened by the New Year’s Day market closure.
U.S. stocks started the final week of 2025 on a softer note on Monday as heavyweight technology shares retreated, nudging the S&P 500 away from recent highs while it remained within striking distance of the 7,000 level.
The late-December rally has left investors looking for a smooth year-end finish, with major indexes poised for another year of double-digit gains and traders watching whether the seasonal “Santa Claus rally” holds into early January. Reuters
That matters because trading volumes are expected to stay light into the New Year’s holiday, and with few major data releases scheduled, price moves in megacap stocks can have an outsized impact on the broader market.
At 9:35 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 66.86 points, or 0.14%, at 48,645.62. The S&P 500 fell 22.08 points, or 0.32%, to 6,907.86, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 142.90 points, or 0.61%, to 23,450.20.
The S&P 500 sat in the 1% range of the 7,000-point mark, a level investors have been tracking as a psychological milestone after the index notched fresh highs last week.
Technology dragged, with the S&P’s information technology sector down 0.7% as Nvidia fell 1.6%. Tesla slid 2.2% after hitting a record high last week.
Not all sectors moved in lockstep. Energy rose 0.7% as crude prices climbed, while the materials sector fell 0.7% as precious metal miners slid after silver pulled back from a run that had taken it above $80 an ounce.
DigitalBridge gained 9.8% after SoftBank Group said it would buy the digital infrastructure investor in a deal valued at $4 billion, giving the Japanese group another foothold in assets tied to the AI boom.
“Given this week’s light economic calendar, internal momentum could be the main market storyline this week,” said Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley. Reuters
A “Santa Claus rally” refers to the stretch when the S&P 500 has typically gained in the last five trading days of the year and the first two sessions of January, according to Stock Trader’s Almanac. A weekend markets preview from Yahoo Finance framed the market as entering 2026 near record levels amid “cautious optimism.” Reuters+1
For now, the Dow and S&P 500 are on pace for their eighth straight monthly advance, a run supported by a rebound in tech after chipmaker Micron Technology issued an upbeat forecast earlier in December.
The bull market — a sustained rise in stock prices — that began in October 2022 has remained intact despite persistent concerns about lofty valuations in parts of the tech sector, Reuters said in a recent .
The S&P 500 is up about 17% so far this year, boosted by enthusiasm around artificial intelligence that helped the U.S. benchmark outpace Europe’s STOXX 600 index, even after investors rotated away from U.S. stocks earlier in the year.
The next catalyst on the calendar is the release of minutes — the Fed’s detailed meeting account — from policymakers’ Dec. 9-10 gathering, due Tuesday, along with a weekly reading on jobless claims later in the week.
The Fed has cut its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points — where one basis point equals 0.01 percentage point — over its last three meetings to a 3.50% to 3.75% range, while investors also await President Donald Trump’s expected nomination of a new Fed chair before Jerome Powell’s term ends in May.
