US equities kicked off the final trading week of 2025 with a bit of a whimper, despite holding close to record highs. The truncated trading week will face a hiccup with a holiday closure on the cards later in the week, and the only meaningful point of interest on the data docket is the latest Federal Reserve (Fed) Meeting Minutes, slated for release on Tuesday.
Major indexes are struggling to find the gas pedal amid rock-bottom year-end volumes. The Standard and Poor’s 500 (SP500) index touched record intraday highs during the overnight session before cooling back to flat for the day, driven lower by another softening in the AI tech rally space and declines in the home building materials segment. The Dow Jones also reached higher during the overnight session before backsliding to a scant 60-point gain from last Friday’s close, with upward momentum sapped by a 1.7% decline in Nvidia (NVDA) shares.
Equities remain bolstered despite year-end slowdown
With the year-end Santa Claus rally keeping bids buoyed, the Dow Jones is on pace to close either bullish or at least flat for the eighth straight month, rounding the corner into the new year. Despite year-end volumes drying up, equities remain buried deep in bull country for the year. The Dow Jones is up over 14% year-to-date, with the SP500 testing a 17.5% gain from January’s opening bids.
Fed minutes in the barrel for Wednesday
The Fed will release its latest Meeting Minutes on Tuesday, and investors will be looking for signs of a dovish tilt in policymakers’ internal decision-making rhetoric. Fed officials hit a cautious tone with the latest dot plot update of interest rate expectations, with Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voting members expecting a total of two quarter-point interest rate cuts over the next two years. Rate market speculators are expecting the Fed to get bullied into more interest rate cuts, with rate traders pricing in two rate trims by September of 2026.
Dow Jones daily chart
Dow Jones FAQs
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of the oldest stock market indices in the world, is compiled of the 30 most traded stocks in the US. The index is price-weighted rather than weighted by capitalization. It is calculated by summing the prices of the constituent stocks and dividing them by a factor, currently 0.152. The index was founded by Charles Dow, who also founded the Wall Street Journal. In later years it has been criticized for not being broadly representative enough because it only tracks 30 conglomerates, unlike broader indices such as the S&P 500.
Many different factors drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). The aggregate performance of the component companies revealed in quarterly company earnings reports is the main one. US and global macroeconomic data also contributes as it impacts on investor sentiment. The level of interest rates, set by the Federal Reserve (Fed), also influences the DJIA as it affects the cost of credit, on which many corporations are heavily reliant. Therefore, inflation can be a major driver as well as other metrics which impact the Fed decisions.
Dow Theory is a method for identifying the primary trend of the stock market developed by Charles Dow. A key step is to compare the direction of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the Dow Jones Transportation Average (DJTA) and only follow trends where both are moving in the same direction. Volume is a confirmatory criteria. The theory uses elements of peak and trough analysis. Dow’s theory posits three trend phases: accumulation, when smart money starts buying or selling; public participation, when the wider public joins in; and distribution, when the smart money exits.
There are a number of ways to trade the DJIA. One is to use ETFs which allow investors to trade the DJIA as a single security, rather than having to buy shares in all 30 constituent companies. A leading example is the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA). DJIA futures contracts enable traders to speculate on the future value of the index and Options provide the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell the index at a predetermined price in the future. Mutual funds enable investors to buy a share of a diversified portfolio of DJIA stocks thus providing exposure to the overall index.
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