By Teresa Rivas
Bah Humbug. The holiday season is in full swing, but investors weren't in the buying mood Monday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 427 points, or 0.9% today, while the S&P 500 fell 0.5%. The Nasdaq Composite lost 0.5%.
On a slow news day, stocks were in a holding pattern following November's late surge.
"Traders are having second thoughts, it seems, about having run stocks up as much as they did last week," writes Thierry Wizman, global FX and rates strategist at Macquarie Group.
Or, maybe, investors are just biding their time ahead of some real news later this week. Multiple prominent tech companies are slated to report earnings midweek, including Salesforce and Marvell Technology.
While it was another bad day for Bitcoin, other risk-on assets like the Magnificent Seven stocks held up relatively well in Monday's trading. Precious metals rose with silver notching a record high -- talk about festive.
History suggests December stock gains are still to come, though the Federal Reserve's rate decision next week is likely to overshadow any historical patterns.
"December is not a bad month, earning on average 0.59% over the past 20 years," notes Siebert Financial CIO Mark Malek. "Not exactly the 2.56% expected in November, but certainly better than worst-month September's -- 0.65% average loss. In December, the S&P 500 logged a gain in 12 out of the last 20 years...Rather than getting caught up in all that, it would seem like focusing on the Fed and what it does and says next week may be a better predictor of whether we get a positive return for the month, or we end up with a lump of coal."
The Hot Stock: Synopsys +4.9% The Biggest Loser: Moderna -7.0%
Best Sector: Energy +0.9% Worst Sector: Utilities -2.4%
Black Friday: All Santa, No Scrooge
Today is Cyber Monday, capping off the long weekend of deals. With major retailers like Amazon.com, Target, and Walmart kicking off the holiday shopping season way back in October, Black Friday no longer dominates the way it once did. But it still matters to retailers -- particularly the non-bricks-and-mortar ones. According to marketing firm Omnisend, Black Friday week has become "make or break" for e-commerce brands, with orders rising by more than a third. Surveying 5,000 brands found that over 16% generated over 30% of their annual orders that single week, while almost 10% generated half or more of their annual orders.
Plenty of retail analysts were out with Black Friday recaps on Monday: Raymond James pronounced it a "strong start" to the holiday season while Morgan Stanley noted that consumer demand increased even as promotions held roughly steady -- "a very positive outcome given last year's high Black Friday bar and the challenging holiday backdrop." This year did include an unwanted guest -- higher prices as a result of tariffs, notes Bank of America. "Significant uncertainty remains about consumers' ability to absorb these higher prices, but Santa always comes."
As my colleague Sabrina Escobar reports, this year's total helped allay fears that a weakened consumer wouldn't show up to shop. Instead, "Americans showed up en masse to take part in the national post-Thanksgiving pastime this year -- especially online," she writes.
Data from Adobe suggests that U.S. shoppers spent about $30 billion online from Thanksgiving through Sunday. The company expects consumers will spend a record $14.2 billion alone on Cyber Monday, bringing the weekend's total spend to more than $40 billion. Online spending rose 9.1% from last year on Black Friday, and increased 8.7% year over year on Saturday and Sunday together.
In-person shopping had a more modest weekend, with in-store sales growing 1.7% from a year ago on Black Friday, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures both in-store and online sales. In-store visits dipped 2.1% on Black Friday from 2024, but were just under 250% higher than the prior Friday this year (Nov. 21), according to foot-traffic data from Sensormatic Solutions.
Mastercard estimates that, in total, online and in-person shopping on Black Friday rose 4.1% year over year. The data isn't adjusted for inflation, which has risen at a roughly 3% annual pace in recent months. Because of that, it's likely that price increases helped push the headline sales figures higher over the weekend.
That said, not everything ran smoothly. Barron's Nate Wolf covered a Shopify outage: "Dozens of apparent Shopify merchants posted screenshots of login error messages in response to the company's X post celebrating Cyber Monday."
Sounds like a good excuse to go to the mall.
The Calendar
CrowdStrike Holdings, Bank of Nova Scotia, Marvell Technology, Pure Storage, Okta, GitLab, Box, Signet Jewelers, and American Eagle Outfitters report results tomorrow.
What We're Reading Today
-- ChatGPT Turns Three. 5 Stocks That Have Soared in the AI Era.
-- Productivity Is About to Slump. Why AI Won't Come to the Rescue.
-- Bitcoin Slump, Retail Investor Gloom Test December Rally Hopes
-- Airline Stocks Are Falling. Thanksgiving Didn't Go to Plan -- the Delays
and Cancellations.
-- Could Retail Stocks Rally Into Year End? What the Charts of Marriott, On
Holding, Lululemon Say.
-- Tesla Stock Is Down. Elon Musk Explains Why He Likes the Letter X.
What's Ahead for Markets in 2026? Join Barron's virtual roundtable on Dec. 11.
From "Liberation Day" tariffs to torrid rallies in AI stocks and gold, this year has been full of surprises. Join us for discussions with investment strategists and money managers about the outlook for the economy and markets in 2026 -- and how to position your portfolio for success.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 01, 2025 19:55 ET (00:55 GMT)
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