A trader works at the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 29, 2025.
NYSE
U.S. stock futures fell Wednesday as Wall Street got ready to close out a bumper year for equities.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures shed 35 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures each dipped 0.1% as well.
Stocks are headed for their fourth-straight losing session, although the declines have been mild and the S&P 500 is still set to lock in a 17% gain for the year, its third straight double-digit annual gain. The Nasdaq Composite has ridden AI enthusiasm to a 21% advance. The Dow is up 13% for 2025, hindered a bit by its lack of tech representation in the 30-stock average.
That marks an impressive recovery from the rout seen in early April following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement. The S&P 500 was even on the cusp of closing in bear market territory at one point, dropping almost 19% from its February high and closing below 5,000 for the first time since April 2024.
Still, the recent declines are somewhat worrisome given that the final five trading days of the year, and the first two of the next, are typically a seasonally rewarding stretch — often referred to as the “Santa Claus” rally — that usually gives stocks one last push toward year-end.
The recent profit-taking could also foreshadow some of the volatility ahead. Strategists surveyed by CNBC expect the S&P 500 could post yet another double-digit advance in 2026, but many worry stocks could spend much of the year range-bound as corporate earnings growth catches up to lofty multiples.
S&P 500, YTD performance
“As we look towards next year, we’re expecting a little bit more volatility,” Meghan Shue, head of investment strategy and portfolio construction at Wilmington Trust, said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”
“I think this is a healthy sort of churn as we reset for the next leg of the bull market, which we expect to continue, outside of what we still have as a decently high recession risk,” Shue added.
Artificial intelligence has been the defining force driving the market for the last three years. In 2023, the S&P 500 surged 24%, after the debut of ChatGPT the prior year unleashed a fervor around the companies most likely to benefit from a technological revolution that harkens back to the dawn of the internet. In 2024, the broad market index rallied another 23%.
The AI narrative fractured somewhat this year, as the rally started to broaden out to other sectors, and even performance among the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks bifurcated. Alphabet was the big winner among the megacaps, up more than 65% year to date, as investors bet the search giant could edge out OpenAI. Amazon was the laggard, gaining roughly 6%.
What’s more, many asset classes outside the megacaps started to outperform. Commodities had an especially good year, with gold up more than 66%, and silver higher by more than 165%.
As of Tuesday’s close, stocks were also on pace to close out a winning month. The Dow is up 1.4% in December, on pace for its eighth winning month in a row, the first such streak going back to 2018. The S&P 500 is up 0.7%, also on track for an eight month win streak. The Nasdaq is higher by 0.2%, heading for its eighth positive month in nine.
— CNBC’s Alex Harring and Chris Hayes contributed to this report.