A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on August 4, 2022.
Source: New York Stock Exchange
the Dow Jones Industrial Average It erased its previous losses and made small gains in weak trading on Thursday after the strong gains the market achieved at the beginning of the holiday week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed today, up 28.77 points, or 0.07%, to 43,325.80, after losing about 182 points earlier in the session. the Standard & Poor's 500 The index fell only 2.45 points, or 0.04%, to 6,037.59 points. the Nasdaq Composite It also ended the day slightly lower, falling less than 0.1% to 20,020.36. The market was closed on Wednesday for Christmas.
Thursday's move came after a strong Christmas Eve for the S&P 500. The index's 1.1% rise on Tuesday marked its best Christmas Eve performance since 1974, according to Bespoke. So far this week, the S&P 500 is up 1.8%, while the Dow Jones is up 1.1%. A strong rally in giant tech companies earlier in the week has lifted the Nasdaq 2.3% so far.
Investors have been excited about the so-called Santa Claus spike, which occurs in the last five trading days of the year and the first two days in January. Since 1950, the S&P 500 has averaged a return of 1.3% during this period, which widely beats the market's average seven-day return of 0.3%, according to LPL Financial. Thursday marks the second day of Santa's walk.
“The Santa Claus rally may be alive and well. We'll see, or it may be tough sledding,” Michael Zinn, senior portfolio manager at UBS Wealth Management, said on CNBC's “Squawk Box.” “It's a quiet time of year. Institutions aren't really trading. It's more retail driven. So what happens at the end of the year is not necessarily an indicator of how January and February will go.”
On the data front, unemployment claims for the week ending December 21 totaled 219,000, compared to the consensus forecast of 225,000 from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. However, continuing claims, or repeated applications for unemployment benefits, rose to 1.91 million, reaching the highest level since November 13, 2021.
Since the beginning of the month, the S&P 500 has risen 0.1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has risen 4.2%, driven by strong gains in Tesla, Apple and Alphabet stocks. However, the Dow Jones fell nearly 3.5%, heading for its worst month since April.
