“Ctrl-alt-del? Bet.”  - the market today… 

Aaaaand just like that, the 2025 market is dead. The day before the worst headache of the year had both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 slipping a roughie into investors’ drinks with a -0.7% dip across the board, while the Dow did its usual “I don’t know what a GPU is” thing and tagged along for the loss. 

(Source: Giphy) 

The good news is, nothing too dramatic happened to cause it. This is just year-end profit taking, tax games, and portfolio managers quietly locking the door behind them before compliance asks questions at work. And yet, zooming out… the S&P still finished up +16% in 2025. For context, that’s three straight years of double-digit gains… which is insane. And also explains why everyone feels vaguely uncomfortable instead of celebratory.

If you recall, 2025 tried to kill the rally at least twice. In April (a month I still have nightmares about), Trump dropped the tariff nuke and the S&P flirted with a 20% drawdown like it was speed-dating disaster. We were literally one ugly CPI print away from “bear market” thinkpieces written by people who went long Peloton in 2021. However, we escaped… We fought, and the AI mouth breathers duct-taped the market back together and dragged it uphill again. 

(Source: Investopedia) 

As for more year-end numbers, Alphabet quietly became the adult in the room (+65%). Nvidia still printed money (+34%) but stopped melting faces, and Amazon… just existed (+5%). Meanwhile, outside the Magnificent Seven bubble it was absolute chaos… in a good way. Gold went full doomsday prepper, up 64%, best year since Nixon was still a role model.  Silver, on the other hand, said “hold my beer” and ripped 140%. 

Additionally, Micron turned into a religious experience (+239%), Palantir did Palantir things (+135%), and AMD continued to mooch off of Obi-Huang-Kenobi’s second hand smoke (+77%).  Bigly. And yet, by December, even the Dow was on an eight-month win streak. Whereas now, the Santa Claus Rally has fizzled as everyone is presumably staring at their screens like, “Are we really doing this again next year?”

(Source: Giphy)

Short answer: yeah, probably. AI is still the spine of this market. Not the whole body… just the part keeping it upright. The hype cooled. The spending didn’t. Meaning, while Wednesday was red, 2025 was nothing but an absolute heater. The kind where you make money, and still feel uneasy about it. For now though enjoy the wins, clock out, and go touch some grass (not that kind of grass). Happy New Year, friends. Until next time… 

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

Market Gossip

> Tech startups hand out nicotine pouches as productivity perk (NY Post): Great, now do nose beers… 

> Economist Mark Zandi sees the Fed surprising with three rate cuts in first half of 2026 (CNBC): Where are the receipts tho? (read: Zandi’s bets on Kalshi) 

> Canadian Stocks Set Record for Records in ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Year (Bloomberg): “Canada’s got short sellers over a barrel and they know it” (ifykyk) 

> OpenAI Is Paying Employees More Than Any Major Tech Startup in History (WSJ): But are they giving away nicotine pouches? Asking for a friend… 

Meme of the Day

My humor is broken… (Source: The Censored Rock) 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon and Alphabet as mentioned in the article.