In one of the classic “Turnaround Tuesday’s” of all time, the market made a dramatic recovery from Monday’s downside disaster in the S&P and Nasdaq, and even the Dow added to its strange gains from the day before.

In one of the most spectacular “Revenge of the Nerds” scenarios, the market’s technology former superstars collapsed while the lagging Dow underperformers made strong gains at the same time.

After reaching a new all-time high on Thursday, things pulled back a little on Friday as the market still reached a second-straight winning week.

Similar to Wednesday, the market started out sharply higher and was able to end with most gains intact by the close. As a result, both the S&P and the Nasdaq ended the week with the best gains in two months and the first winning week of the year.

After Thursday’s upside explosion, the indexes could not hold onto early nominal gains and just drifted lower as the afternoon unfolded.

What happened in yesterday’s upside rocket ship was what I said could take place if:

The market struggled to end higher yesterday on a late comeback, as some negative news impeded what should have been a better showing from the latest December P.P.I. report.

In what could have been a temporarily bottom from a very oversold market, the indexes all rallied back from their worst levels to end mixed to higher.

U.S. stocks fell sharply on Friday on worries that the “good news is bad news” syndrome may be too good by keeping inflation and interest rates high.

The market ended mixed on Wednesday, but a little to the upside after a horrible day on Tuesday and a better one on Monday, but there was shakiness in the activity and potential hopes that today’s 8:30am monthly jobs report will not further deteriorate the recent overall weaker conditions, and the answer is that it did, and see below for details.

After a strong showing on Monday to start the new week, things got ugly after a nominally higher start yesterday, as ostensibly two reports that resulted in higher bond yields put things sharply lower, as this pattern of extreme volatility in both directions has become the basic market scenario.

Rising technology stocks yesterday salvaged out a winning session, but all of the major indices did suffer large intraday declines from their record mid-day highs.

In another awful session, what began with large gains in the major indices which could have gotten the Santa Claus rally back to positive if gone the distance, the indices just fell apart very badly but were able to come back from really bad early afternoon losses to end only modestly lower.

In another awful session, what began with large gains in the major indices which could have gotten the Santa Claus rally back to positive if gone the distance, the indices just fell apart very badly but were able to come back from really bad early afternoon losses to end only modestly lower.

The market ended the final day of 2024 in somewhat of a pattern that it has been trending lately, namely the major indices lower for the fourth straight day, but this time investors had a little pity on some of the worst Dow performers and gave them a break while breadth numbers were actually positive for a change. But the high-flying technology stocks continued to weaken once again.

After starting out the traditionally bullish Santa Claus rally last Tuesday with a nice gain, the market has now fallen for three straight sessions and is in danger of ending this period with a decline as there are now three days to go. And they are today plus the final two days this week on Thursday and Friday.

After starting the first two days of the holiday-shortened week on the strong side, things cooled off a bit to end the week, and Friday the market did really poorly.

The second day of the 5 + 2 sessions ended yesterday with the major indices ending mixed as the S&P and Nasdaq ended nominally down after having made a nice comeback from their early morning lows.

In the two days since the last newsletter on Monday, the market has done very well, with the half-day before Christmas on Tuesday being a real upside moonshot with the Dow exploding upward for a 390 point advance to 43,297 with 28 of its 30 members higher. It was now the fourth better day in a row.

Federal Reserve officials are closely watching how inflation shapes up as they decide when and how much to cut interest rates in 2025, and the latest inflation data offers reasons for both concern and hope.