Weekly Stock Market Update | Dow, S&P 500, NASDAQ News – December 28, 2025

The US stock market closed with little change on Friday, yet all three major indexes—Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite—registered solid weekly gains of over 1%. This success initiates the ‘Santa Claus rally’ period, which usually consists of the last five trading days of the year and the first two of the new year.

The Dow closed just below its record finish from Wednesday, while the S&P 500 was up nearly 18% for the year, set for its sixth year of 15%+ gains out of the past seven. The tech-heavy Nasdaq also registered an over 20% rise in 2025, despite a brief entry into a bear market following President Trump’s significant tariffs in April.

Meanwhile, precious metals like gold and silver have been rallying, reaching fresh records due to geopolitical tensions and continued dollar weakness. None of these trends were significantly influenced by the dwindling bets on interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve in 2026.

The S&P 500 reached a new record high on Wednesday and climbed to 6,932.05, with the Dow and Nasdaq also registering highlights. The S&P 500 index’s upward trend was driven by financials and industrials sectors instead of technology. The market seems to have benefited from tax bills and interest rate cuts.

Key players include Nike, which increased by 4.6% after Apple CEO Tim Cook disclosed he bought shares in the company. Other standouts were Micron Technology and Citigroup, both shares up 3.8% and 1.8% respectively, hitting fresh records during the session.

The New York Stock Exchange anticipates a “quiet” period due to lower trading volume and predicts a possible 1%-2% surge for the S&P 500 before the year-end.

Looking forward, Wall Street strategies predict the continued success of the indexes in 2026. The S&P 500 closed Friday’s trading session at 6,929.94, with predictions from JPMorgan Chase and HSBC placing the index at 7,500 by the end of 2026. Even more optimistic, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank set their 2026 targets at 7,800 and 8,000 respectively.

Despite limited movement following the Christmas break, the three major stock market averages are reportedly on track for weekly gains. The chipmaker Nvidia increased the startup Groq for a record-breaking $20 billion deal this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a gain of nearly 300 points, leading to a record high. The S&P 500 rose by 0.3% to make a second record close and Nasdaq Composite gained just under 0.2%.

One of the stand-out gainers this week was Micron Technology Inc., seeing its stock price rise by 3.8%. On the other side, Intel seemed to experience a drop after reports that Nvidia halted a test using Intel’s fabrication process for advanced chips.

Despite the fallout from supply chain bottlenecks and tariffs driving up prices, artificial intelligence trade propelled U.S. stock markets to close higher on five consecutive days. AI infrastructure capex spending is projected to cross $1 trillion in 2028 due to strong demand for cloud computing and data centers.

While the New York Times reports a slowing in the growth of its subscribers and a marginal shortfall on operating margins causing analysts to suggest caution, Coupang and Gorman-Rupp are currently pointed to as positive prospects for investors.