Volume continues to decline ahead of the long holiday weekend. As a reminder, both the Stock and bond markets will be closed. Monday for New Year's Day. Today, however, the market participants who stayed were watching the S&P 500 as it approached a new all-time high.
In intraday trading, the S&P 500 rose as high as 4,793.30, just a stone's throw from its all-time closing high of 4,796.56 on Jan. 3, 2022. The broad market index finished just below here, at 4,783, 0.04% more than the day.
the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average ,Nasdaq CompoundNasdaq remains approximately 6% below its all-time closing high of 16,057.44 on November 19, 2021.
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Today's gains add to this year's Santa Claus rally, a period spanning the last five trading days of December and the first two trading days of January, when stocks historically perform well.
"[T]These 7 days are more likely to be higher than any other 7 days of the year, [with the S&P 500] up to 79.5% of the time," he writes Ryan Detrick in X
Since its close on Thursday, December 21 (the start of this year's Santa Claus rally), the S&P 500 has risen 0.8%.
Unemployment claims increase
Thursday was the busiest day for economic data this week. In particular, a Department of Labor report showed Unemployment claims
"Jobless claims rose during the week ending December 23, but overall continue to trend sideways and have not yet shown the sustained weakness the Fed would like to see," it says Eugenio Alemรกn
Further jobs
Microsoft can recover another 20%, says analyst
In individual stock news, microsoft Daniel Ives
The price target increase reflects "recent and increasingly bullish AI." [artificial intelligence] customer checks with 'revolutionary' Co-Pilot monetization now on MSFT's doorstep through 2024," Ives writes in a note to clients. "We believe stocks have yet to price in what we view as the next wave of cloud and AI growth comes to Redmond's story with a strong competitive advantage in the cloud against Amazon and Google."
MSFT to close 2023 up 57%, but it's only third best Dow Jones Stocks in the year. First of all there is Sales force (CRM, -0.4%) with its 101% gain and Intel
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