Stocks started the week on a heater after two chaotic forces somehow joined hands in bullish harmony: politicians remembered how to govern, and Trump promised free money.

Today marked the 40th straight day of darkness in D.C., and just when it felt like Congress had collectively ghosted America, the Senate finally did something productive. Eight Democrats broke ranks to push a funding bill forward… reopening the government through January and reversing some layoffs.

Then came the second spark… Trump fired up Truth Social with his most “stimmy-core” post yet, promising Americans $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks for “standing up to global freeloaders.” Translation: another round of stimulus, but make it patriotic.

And just like that, Wall Street found religion again. The Dow soared 404 points (+0.9%). The S&P 500 jumped 1.6%. And the Nasdaq (which had been face-down last week from AI exhaustion) jolted awake with a 2.3% rally. The same traders who spent last week whining about valuations are now mainlining risk alongside Cathie Wood and Roaring Kitty.

Speaking of AI stocks, they had a field day. Nvidia skyrocketed 3.5%, AMD popped nearly 4%, and Broadcom rose 1.7%. Even Microsoft, which had been on an eight-day losing streak (its longest since 2011, aka the “Windows Phone era”), finally caught a bid. 

Tesla and Alphabet joined the charge because if the government’s open and Trump’s handing out checks, who isn’t bullish?

The Senate’s deal isn’t exactly a budget masterpiece… it keeps the lights on until January, adds some worker protections, and punts the messy fights (like ACA subsidies) to December. But at this point, “partial functionality” is the new stimulus.

Over in Nebraska, Warren Buffett dropped a tearjerker of his own… saying he’s done writing Berkshire Hathaway’s iconic annual letters and won’t be speaking at future shareholder meetings. It’s one of those bizarrely bittersweet market days: the Nasdaq’s launching 2% higher, but the Oracle of Omaha just hung up his pen. 

Still, if Trump’s really about to hand out $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks, investors will find a way to dry their tears. History’s pretty clear on this one… every time stimmies hit mailboxes, stonks go vertical. So it’s gonna be a fun end to the year. 

And after a few weeks of quiet trading and minor pops, our Stock Prophet Watchlist finally delivered some real fireworks. Our alert on MOVE hit at 8:41 am, and the thing just took off… up 92%. So hopefully, you caught a piece of that one.

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.

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