“I immediately regret this decision” - everyone who panic sold last week 

Four straight days of green, and suddenly the S&P 500 just punched through another all-time high, closing at 6,909 like it was nothing. The Nasdaq tagged along, tech stocks did tech stock things, and anyone who panic-sold last week is now staring at their screen like they accidentally sold Bitcoin in 2013 to pay rent.

(Source: Giphy) 

Why? Because AI stocks are back in charge of the aux cord and the U.S. economy just printed a bigly 4.3% GDP growth for Q3. Now normally, that kind of number would freak markets out. Strong economy = Fed stays hawkish = stocks cry. That briefly happened at the open… and then traders remembered something important: The Fed still wants rate cuts next year… and the market is all for it.

For instance, futures are pricing in two cuts by the end of 2026, GDP be damned . Kevin Hassett went on TV and basically said the Fed is moving like it’s on airport Wi-Fi, but markets didn’t care. They saw “rates eventually go down” and moved on with their lives. That said, consumer confidence did dip out again. Apparently, Donald's stimmy promises aside, people feel worse about the economy. To be fair, they always do… and yet, that index has been sliding since January, and yet here we are at all-time highs. Turns out markets don’t actually require consumers to feel good… they just need earnings to not implode. And right now, earnings are holding up just fine. 

(Source: Giphy) 

Oh, and AI spending accounted for a chunky slice of recent growth, which is both bullish and extremely concerning depending on how long you’ve been alive. Right now it’s being treated like free money. Less than 5% of GDP, but somehow responsible for all the “stonks go up” energy. 

Meanwhile, on the corporate front, ServiceNow decided to remind everyone that private markets are still absolutely feral. They’re buying cybersecurity startup Armis for $7.75B… in cash and debt… just weeks after Armis raised at a $6.1B valuation and casually mentioned it might IPO in a year or two.

Y tho? 

Well, security is one of the few AI adjacencies nobody is cutting spending on. If you’re wiring every company on Earth to LLMs, you probably don’t want some intern in Belarus SSH’ing into the backend. Of course, ServiceNow dropped -1.58% on the day mainly because Wall Street loves to pretend big acquisitions are scary… until the revenue shows up.

(Source: Giphy) 

So yeah… the market popped today, giving us all a nice dose of a Santa Rally. Will it hold up through tomorrow's half-day? Who knows. For now though, up and to the right is the song of the day… Anything else is just background noise. Until next time, friends… 

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

>Citadel to Return $5 Billion of Hedge Fund’s Profits to Clients (Bloomberg): Does Gabe Plotkin get any of that? Asking for a friend… 
 

>Hackers stole over $2.7B in crypto in 2025, data shows (Tech Crunch): Internet safety rule #1: Always use a VPN (iykyk) 
 

>US Economy Grows at Fastest Pace in Years With 4.3% GDP Gain (Bloomberg): Sooo there’s not a bubble? 
 

>U.S. pushes additional tariffs on Chinese chips to June 2027 (CNBC): Ahhh sh*t here we go again… 
 

Meme of the Day



 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies in the article…