Santa Claus Rally Continues

Dec 26, 2023 | Market Commentary

Friends

 

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. As expected, it was a somewhat quiet news day for the markets and also as expected the Santa Claus rally appears to be in full swing as we head into the new year. Stocks rose consistently higher throughout the trading session and there just didn’t seem to be any sellers around.

 

For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 159 points to close at 37,545. The S&P 500 was up 20 points to finish the day at 4,774. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 81 points to close at 15,074. Gold was up $8 to trade at $2,077 per ounce, while oil was up $1.67 to trade at $75.23 per barrel WTI.

 

I would expect trading to be light and markets to be less volatile this week, but you never know when an algorithmic buy or sell program might be triggered. Anyway, we’ll let you know how things unfold into year end.

 

Have a nice evening everyone.

Recent Posts

Tech Stocks Continue to Drag Market Lower

Tech Stocks Continue to Drag Market Lower

Friends The weakness in tech/AI stocks continues and the market averages, especially the Nasdaq, continue to lose ground as we get closer to year end. Instead of taking a victory lap the stocks that have been the leaders all year long are now cowering nervously in the...

Stocks Mostly Lower after Employment Data Release

Stocks Mostly Lower after Employment Data Release

Friends This morning’s release of the November non-farm payroll number showed that 64,000 new jobs were added, which was better than analysts had expected. The unemployment rate did tick up to 4.6%, which was actually more than expected. It’s hard to determine if this...

Stocks Soft As Economic Data Looms

Stocks Soft As Economic Data Looms

Friends Today was pretty much the same script we have seen over the past couple of weeks. The AI/big tech names came under selling pressure enough to take the market averages into negative territory. It’s hard to read too much into recent market action as we are so...