Closing post (2): Wall Street closes at record high
And finally… two of the US stock market’s major indices have ended Christmas Eve at new closing highs.
The Dow Industrials and S&P 500 registered closing record highs in a broad rally during a holiday-shortened session, Reuters reports, in a positive start to the Santa Rally period.
The S&P 500 gained 0.32%, while the Dow finished up 0.6%.
We had a great Santa Claus rally today: DJIA up .6%, S&P500 up .3% (new record high!), NASDAQ Composite up .2%. Merry Christmas to all! @Team_Brighton https://t.co/8AXsnnXLHq
— George Conboy (@gtconboy) December 24, 2025
BREAKING: THE S&P 500 JUST HIT ANOTHER RECORD HIGH! 📈
— Peter Tuchman (@EinsteinoWallSt) December 24, 2025
The index has now gained over $1.6 TRILLION in market cap over the past five days 😳 pic.twitter.com/uxxBzslyNK
This is the fifth straight session of gains, helped by a rebound in AI-related names and optimism of cuts to US interest rates next year.
Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York, says:
“Yields are behaving, volume is light, but the same issues remain in place - AI is strong, there is talk of some positives here, new OpenAI and Meta models, that will get the chatter up.
“The Fed is unlikely to lower rates again, at least for a while. Who knows what happens when May comes and we get a new head of the Fed? But we have a very low probability of a January cut.”
In the meantime, it’s time to wrap this blog up (again). Merry Christmas!
Today’s Wall Street gains will reinforce the idea of a Santa rally – the concept that stock markets tend to move higher this time of year.
Bloomberg explains:
Investors hoping for a “Santa Claus Rally” — which typically encompasses the last five trading sessions of the year and the first two of the new one — saw the S&P 500 rising at the start of that period. Volume was almost 50% below the average of the past month. Bond yields and the dollar fell.
Updated
