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When the stock market is up 18% for the year in December, a sideways week counts as win. With only a handful of companies still yet to report their earnings for the third quarter (Broadcom being one big name) and the monthly jobs report delayed because of October’s government shutdown, investors were in wait-and-see mode.
The big event on the horizon is the Federal Reserve meeting that concludes Wednesday afternoon. As Sarah Hansen writes, the bond market is signaling that another interest rate cut is seen as almost a done deal, but those odds may overstate the case for a rate cut. The reason: growing divisions among Fed officials about the outlook.
Looking back over the past year, a key trend in the stock market has been the growing concentration of returns (and investor dollars) in a relatively small number of stocks. A few weeks back, we noted how stocks at 52-week highs and lows were clustered in just a few sectors. This week, we looked at the mega-sized stocks that make up the Trillion-Dollar Club. There are now 10 (almost 11) companies that are worth a mind-boggling trillion dollars or more. But beyond market caps, what really matters are valuations. Are these monster stocks still a buy after amassing such huge scale? Here’s what Morningstar’s analysts have to say.
Many (though not all) of the stocks in the Trillion-Dollar Club are beneficiaries of the AI boom. What many investors may not realize is that there are some big AI winners outside the United States. In fact, these companies are largely responsible for emerging market strategies having their best year since 2017. We dig into the stocks driving big EM returns this year.
While it’s been a banner year for stocks, 2025 is turning out to be one to forget for crypto, with bitcoin plunging nearly 30% since early October. As we highlight, after pouring billions of dollars into crypto exchange-traded funds this year, many investors ran for the hills in November.
Against this backdrop, where should investors look for bargains? Dave Sekera, chief US market strategist for Morningstar, offers his latest monthly outlook and considers whether a Santa Claus rally or AI exhaustion is in the cards.
Lastly, we recapped November’s big movers among individual stocks. We’ve got the month’s best and worst performers, as well as the 10 top-performing dividend stocks.
As always, be sure to visit our Markets page for our latest coverage and live stock market updates, along with our full weekly calendar of key upcoming data and events.