US stock futures retreated on Monday morning, as bitcoin’s (BTC-USD) slump deepened and Wall Street’s strong late-November rebound looked set to hit a speed bump in the first trading day of December.
Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F) futures fell roughly 0.4%, after the blue-chip benchmark led Wall Street indexes to a fifth day of gains on Friday. Contracts on the S&P 500 (ES=F) dropped 0.5%, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) slid 0.7%.
The Thanksgiving week rally was fueled in large part by rising hopes for an interest-rate cut from the Federal Reserve in December, as over 85% of bets sit on a quarter-point cut next week.
Bitcoin fell sharply on Monday, another sign that markets are kicking December off in a risk-off mood. The leading cryptocurrency dropped as much as 6% overnight, to below $86,000, before chipping back some losses.
December tends to be a strong month for markets, as stocks grind higher after Thanksgiving and volatility fades. This year, though, analysts aren’t sure there’ll be a seasonal boost, given persistent uncertainty this year has seen stocks buck the usual seasonal trends.
“None have behaved the way they have seasonally,” Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Yahoo Finance.
Meanwhile, after a year of butting heads with current Chair Jerome Powell, President Trump has announced that he has picked who he wants to lead the central bank next. “I know who I am going to pick, yeah,” Trump told media Sunday night from Air Force One, without naming his choice.
Economic releases continue to flow back to normal after the chaos of the 43-day government shutdown. This week features a delayed release of September’s Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which contains the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge. Investors will also see private reports on manufacturing activity and service sector activity, as well as ADP’s monthly private payrolls report.
The thinning docket of corporate earnings continues this week with bargain retailers Dollar Tree (DLTR), Dollar General (DG), and Five Below (FIVE) reporting. Salesforce (CRM) and CrowdStrike (CRWD) will feature from the tech industry.
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Silver jumps to extend its record-beating rally
Silver (SI=F) jumped near-on 2% to a fresh all-time peak on Monday as traders eyed tight supply and optimism for a US interest-rate cut in December.
The metal was trading above $58 an ounce, having surged almost 6% on Friday to a record high.
Bloomberg reports:
[Silver] has climbed for six consecutive days and doubled in value this year, outpacing a roughly 60% rally in gold (GC=F).
A record amount of the metal flowed into London in October to ease a historic squeeze in the world’s biggest silver trading hub, but this has put other centers under pressure. Inventories in warehouses linked to the Shanghai Futures Exchange recently hit their lowest in nearly a decade, and the cost of borrowing the metal over one month remains elevated.
Both metals have also got a boost from increased expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in December. …. The release of economic data delayed by the US government’s six-week shutdown has also supported the case for lower borrowing costs, which typically benefit non-yielding precious metals.
Read more here.
‘I don’t know if we’ll get that Santa rally’: Why Wall Street says December may break from its usual strength
Yahoo Finance’s Allie Canal reports:
The Santa Claus rally is usually one of Wall Street’s favorite holiday traditions. Stocks tend to grind higher after Thanksgiving, volatility fades, and December often delivers one of the strongest months of the year.
This year, strategists say, Santa may not show up.
“None [of the months this year] have behaved the way they have seasonally,” Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Yahoo Finance.
And there are plenty of reasons why. The year has offered reminder after reminder that this isn’t a normal market cycle: The DeepSeek meltdown in February; President Trump’s surprise tariff announcement in April; and months of hand-wringing over AI valuations.
Those helped create a roller-coaster ride for investors that pushed stocks to record highs, before volatility resurfaced again in recent weeks.
This has been a year when the traditional playbook hasn’t worked because the rules of the game are changing in real time. AI has introduced a level of disruption and uncertainty that strategists say is fundamentally different from anything in the past decade.
Read more here.
Oil gains as traders eye risks from attack on key Black Sea terminal, Venezuela tensions
Bloomberg reports:
Oil rose as a key pipeline linking Kazakh fields to Russia’s Black Sea coast halted loading after one of its three moorings was damaged in an attack over the weekend.
Brent (BZ=F) traded above $63. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium carries most of Kazakhstan’s crude exports, which have averaged 1.6 million barrels a day so far this year.
Ukraine hasn’t commented on the incident at the CPC facility, although it confirmed separate attacks on an oil refinery and tankers over the weekend.
The incident came after the OPEC+ producer-group led by Saudi Arabia reiterated a three-month plan to halt output hikes in the first quarter of next year. OPEC+ again said the move reflected weaker seasonal market conditions. A major surplus is expected in the early part of next year.
Oil posted a fourth consecutive monthly drop in November as expectations for a swelling surplus weighed on the outlook, with the International Energy Agency forecasting a record glut in 2026. Still, geopolitical tensions from Russia to Venezuela — where President Trump warned airspace should be considered closed over the weekend, add to the bullish risks for prices.
Read more here.
ChatGPT was unveiled 3 years ago, kicking off the AI revolution. For investors, it did even more.
Yahoo Finance’s Myles Udland reports:
The three-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s release was on Sunday.
For investors and the corporate world, a lot more than three years’ worth of change has followed.
Stock prices have soared. Workflows have changed. Staffing needs have been radically altered. A massive domestic infrastructure buildout is underway.
The economy has become increasingly K-shaped, with the distance widening between the financial haves and have-nots in both the corporate and consumer realms.
The transformed state of the economy and markets is remarkable on its own merits. But against the backdrop of the markets from which this artificial intelligence boom emerged, the turnaround is even more impressive.
Simply put, ChatGPT didn’t just catalyze the biggest technological boom in a generation; it offered a catalyst to turn around one of the lousiest market environments investors had been dealing with since the financial crisis.
… And it is with this context that the doubt which has seemed to dog this bull run becomes more explicable.
Read more here in this takeaway from Morning Brief.
Bitcoin leads crypto sell-off as coin drops below $87,000
Cryptocurrencies fell early Monday morning as a week of sell-off continued despite appearing to stablize at the end of last week.
Bloomberg reports:
Read more here.
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