Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 17, 2024.
NYSE
U.S. stock futures were little changed Thursday night after a volatile start to the new year.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell by 19 points, or 0.04%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures dipped 0.03% and 0.05%, respectively.
Stocks kicked off January with a choppy trading session, with investors taking profits in some notable 2024 gainers such as Apple and Tesla. The Dow ended the day lower by more than 150 points, or about 0.4%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite slid about 0.2%, each. All three benchmarks were higher earlier in the day, with the Dow having gained more than 300 points at one point, but fell back as the session progressed.
Those moves come after stocks ended 2024 on a sour note, with the S&P 500 closing out the year with four consecutive days of losses, a first going back to 1966. The broad market index notched a stupendous 23% gain for the year, but fell 2.5% in December. The “Santa Claus” rally, in which stocks gain in the final five trading days of one year and the first two of the next, also failed to materialize.
“The setup for some of this weakness was probably very sentiment driven. We had really gotten to a lot of frothy conditions in the aftermath of the election, that post-election rally period, especially when we went back into that concentration problem,” Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Thursday.
“I don’t think there was really any kind of prime catalyst,” she added. “I think it was a little bit more of an exhaustion from a sentiment standpoint.”
The economic calendar is thin on catalysts this week, but traders on Friday will watch for the latest reading of the ISM Manufacturing Index. Federal Reserve officials Thomas Barkin and Mary Daly are also set to speak.
Stocks are on pace to close out the week with losses. As of Thursday’s close, the 30-stock Dow and S&P 500 were lower by more than 1%, each. The Nasdaq Composite slid more than 2%.