The disappearance of Santa Rally is not necessarily bad news

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Do you like what you see? You can subscribe here.

Difficult week of negotiation
US stocks got up on friday but still ended the week on the downside. The S&P 500 energy sector bucked the trend and is up more than 3% for the week. from europe Stoxx 600 index fell 0.49%. Auto stocks were among the worst performers, with Stellar Shares lost about 2% after the company reported a 45.7% reduction in 2024 production.

The Year of Boeing’s Reconstruction
boeing has not posted annual profits since 2018, when the first of two fatal events occurred Accidents of their 737 Max that killed 346 people. A year ago, an unused emergency exit door exploded in the air of a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines. New CEO Kelly Ortberg, who took over the top job in August, is tasked with ensuring Boeing can ramp up production and maintain quality. here it is how are you doing.

Sales of foreign phones in China plummet
Sales of foreign phone brands in China amounted to 3.04 million units in November, according to CNBC calculations based on data from the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology. That represents a 47.4% drop from November 2023, suggesting brands like Apple has been struggling in the Chinese market.

Microsoft invests heavily in data centers
microsoft plans spend $80 billion in fiscal year 2025 on building data centers that can handle AI workloads, the company said in a Friday blog post. More than half of the planned spending on AI infrastructure will be in the United States, wrote Microsoft vice president and president Brad Smith. Microsoft’s 2025 fiscal year ends in June.

(PRO) Eye on the December employment report
Big economic data This week there are minutes from the US Federal Reserve’s December meeting, which will be released on Wednesday, and the December jobs report, which will be released on Friday. While neither is likely to change the Fed’s interest rate decision at its January meeting, they could provide more clarity on the central bank’s actions in 2025.

On Friday, the S&P 500 added 1.26%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite it advanced 1.77%. Still, the losses from previous trading sessions (before Friday, the S&P and Nasdaq were on a five-day losing streak) were too heavy to bear. For the week, the S&P 500 fell 0.48%, the Dow lost 0.60% and the Nasdaq fell 0.51%.

This means that the so-called Santa Claus Rally, a phenomenon in which stocks rise during the last five business days of the year and the first two of the next, did not decline in the markets this year.

The lack of visits from Santa this year could indicate a Tougher times ahead for stocks As the late Yale Hirsch, founder of the Stock Trader’s Almanac in 1968, saying“If Santa doesn’t call, the bears may come to Broad and Wall.”

That said, putting too much faith in such signs can be the adult equivalent of believing that it’s actually Santa who puts a PlayStation under the tree because we were nice kids.

And just as we grew up and realized that it was money that generated gifts for us, it behooves us to remember that the stock market is a bet on how much cash companies can generate.

On that front, USB‘ David Lefkowitz, the bank’s chief investment officer for U.S. equities, is optimistic. “We expect the bull market to continue with the S&P 500 reaching 6,600 by the end of the year, driven primarily by healthy 9% earnings growth,” Lefkowitz wrote in a recent note. His price target implies an increase of about 11% from Friday’s close.

That is such a precious gift that no person, real or imagined, could give.

— CNBC’s Fred Imbert, Pia Singh, Sean Conlon, Jesse Pound and Sarah Min contributed to this report.