Your Evening Briefing

December 26, 2025

Stocks finish flat on sleepy trading day

Stocks were little changed amid thin trading volumes. While the S&P 500 notched a new intraday high, the benchmark index broke its five-day win streak. The Nasdaq 100 also closed marginally lower, while the Russell 2000 underperformed relative to the other indexes.

Movers:

Nvidia rose on Wednesday’s news of its licensing agreement with AI inference specialist Groq.
Coupang surged after the online retailer said customer information downloaded in a data breach has been deleted.

Will retail traders’ option-fueled market stampede keep accelerating?

The last major peak in call volumes traded coincided with the end of the SPAC boom and a downturn in speculative stocks. Read more.

If this really is an AI bubble, let’s see some more inflation

If we’re running back the late ’90s, valuations for the biggest AI spenders would be in for a push higher.

Read more.

Will Corporate America’s AI adoption justify the massive capital spending?
We no longer appear to live in a world where AI capex is enough to justify the continued success of the theme.
Will gold keep leaving digital gold in the dust?
Gold has the best trend in financial markets, and bitcoin, despite the arrival of the “Crypto President,” does not.
Monitor credit-sensitive pockets of the stock market for a read on the US economy
Business development companies and regional banks diverged in 2025. What awaits in 2026?

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