Year-End Crosscurrents as Markets Drift Near Highs

| By Harry Boxer, Technical Market Analyst

Indexes Drift Near Record Highs

The major U.S. stock indexes slipped over the first half of the week but rebounded on Thursday and Friday. For the week, the NASDAQ and S&P 500 finished fractionally higher while the Dow ended slightly down. The latter two indices remained about 1% below their record levels set on December 11. The S&P 500 ended the week with a gain of just .01%, Nasdaq was +.05% The Russell 2000 Index performed worst, declining 0.86%, followed by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which shed 0.67%.

Nearing the end of the year the results are as follows: Nasdaq +20.7%, S&P 500 +15.2% and the Russell 2000 small cap index +13.4%.

Precious Metals Continue Historic Run

Precious metals prices continued to rise, with silver surpassing $67 per ounce for the first time ever and gold eclipsing a record set two months earlier. With less than two weeks left in 2025, silver was up more than 130% year to date based on Friday’s prices, and gold was up 64%.

Holiday Trading, Mixed Signals Ahead

Next week will be holiday-shortened and there doesn’t appear to be many market-moving catalysts next week. Trading volume is expected to be light, which could suggest the potential for higher volatility. It’s a difficult environment to forecast which direction markets are likely to move, not only because there were a lot of mixed economic signals this week, but there’s also a mixed technical picture.

The late week recovery in the SPX is encouraging, but the price action in the Russell 2000 looks murky at this point. Yes, the intermediate and longer-term technical trend in all the majors is bullish, but very near-term there isn’t a decisive trend.

Closing Perspective

In any case, as we always do at thetechtrader.com, we’ll be “Trading What We See Technically, Not What We Think”

*No credit card required