Market Movers & Shakers

Santa Claus skipped Wall Street again this year! Last week’s holiday-shortened trading week saw very light volumes as the major U.S. equity indices drifted lower. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined the most among its peers, down 1.52%. The S&P 500 and the small-cap Russell 2000 were not too far off, both closing lower by 1.03%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.67%. From a sector standpoint, three of eleven sectors in the S&P 500 finished the week in the green: Energy, Utilities, and Industrials. Consumer Discretionary and Information Technology were the largest underperformers.



Source: LPL Research (Original), Bloomberg (Original). Modified by Tandem to include 2025-2026 SCR data point.

Despite a positive trading session on Monday, the S&P 500 fell short of delivering a gain during the seven-session holiday trading window known as the Santa Claus rally. The Santa Claus rally, which covers the last 5 trading days of the year plus the first 2 of the new year, was first defined by Yale Hirsch in the Stock Trader’s Almanac in the early 1970s. This period has historically provided a seasonal tailwind for stocks, with an average return of 1.3% for the S&P 500 since 1950. Stocks have never experienced a negative Santa Claus rally for three consecutive years—until now! While the S&P 500 ended just a few points lower during this year’s window, it follows negative returns in both 2023 and 2024. Market historians often point to the old adage by Yale Hirsch: “If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears may come to Broad and Wall”, as past failed Santa Claus rallies have preceded some nasty bear markets (2000 and 2008 most notably) and some mild market selloffs (February 2016 and April 2025 most recently). However, let’s be clear, a negative Santa Claus rally doesn’t always portend a negative year for stocks… just look at the past 2 years as evidence of that.

It was a very quiet week from a macroeconomic data perspective. The release of the December FOMC minutes offered no surprises and reinforced market expectations for a cautious, gradual easing of monetary policy in 2026, though division within the Federal Reserve remains a key focus point for markets. Last week’s release of initial jobless claims data for the week ended December 27th showed Americans filed the fewest new jobless claims in a month. Initial claims for unemployment benefits dropped unexpectedly by 16,000 week-over-week to a seasonally adjusted 199,000, the lowest since the end of November. 199,000 in new claims came in well below consensus estimates of 220,000, marking the third straight weekly decline in new claims and the seventh week in the past eight. Continuing claims, the number of people who remain unemployed and are still receiving unemployment benefits after their initial claim, fell by 47,000 to 1.866 million during the week ending December 20th. Continuing claims neared the 2 million mark in October, but have since receded as the record-length government shutdown ended in November. The U.S. labor market continues to remain in what policymakers describe as a “no hire, no fire” mode.



Source: U.S. Employment and Training Administration via FRED®

While the stock and bond markets were quiet during the holiday weeks, commodities garnered much of the attention from market participants. Precious metals continued their blistering rally into year end, with gold, silver, and platinum all hitting record highs. Gold prices ended the year above $4,300 an ounce, posting a more than 60% gain in 2025. Silver prices squeezed to above $80 an ounce in trading shortly after Christmas before settling just above $70/oz at year end, closing higher by more than 140% in 2025 and making the white metal the year’s top performing asset. Elsewhere in the commodities space, oil markets were closely monitored over the weekend and in Monday trading following the capture and arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves; however, production has tumbled over the past couple of decades amid political corruption and unrest. Despite the geopolitical news and uncertainty surrounding future leadership of the oil rich nation, WTI crude oil remained below $60/barrel and oil market volatility, as measured by the CBOE Crude Oil Volatility Index (OVX), hovered near multi-year lows.



Source: Adapted by Bloomberg Opinion from ‘Political Conflict and Economic Growth in Post-Independence Venezuela’, BP and International Energy Agency

Updates & News*

The year wrapped up quietly for Tandem stocks, with little to no major news for our core holdings. Consequently, it was relatively light in terms of transition activity in new manager-traded accounts and accounts with recent deposits following the Christmas holiday. Stay tuned for our upcoming commentary pieces, Observations by Billy Little set to release next week, and The Tandem Report by Ben Carew, which will be hot off the press in the back half of the month for more Tandem news!

Source: Source of all data is FactSet, unless otherwise noted.

*The transition level activity taken by Tandem is applicable to new manager-traded accounts and new money in manager-traded accounts, not the composite or firm-wide level. New manager-traded accounts and new money in manager-traded accounts are not automatically invested on the first day. Rather, they are transitioned into our strategy over a longer time period that is dependent upon market conditions, this process differs from Tandem’s model-provided strategies, where money is invested on the day the account opens. Strategy level activity is applicable to the composite and action is taken at the firm-wide level.

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