Meet Alpha: Your AI-powered investment watchlist, now available as a standalone app for iOS devices. Originally built by the investing platform Public, Alpha actively monitors the stocks, ETFs, and crypto you care about, delivering real-time alerts on breaking news, market movements, earnings calls, and more.
When an asset on your watchlist changes, Alpha gives you the why behind the move with clear, contextual insights that make sense of market activity. Plus, you can ask Alpha any question using its intuitive natural-language interface to dive into market trends, earnings, or historical data.
Download Alpha now on iOS, and start building your investment watchlist for just $1/week — or free if you’re a Public member.
Santa might be done climbing chimneys for the year but he’s still expected on the trading floor for another week.Â
Investors are anticipating strong momentum heading into 2025 thanks to the so-called Santa Claus Rally, which includes the final five trading sessions of the year plus the first two of January.Â
Dating back to 1950, the S&P 500 climbs 1.3% on average across these seven days. A typical stretch of the same length sees about a 0.3% gain, data from LPL Financial shows.Â
While Santa skipped 2023, he visits traders more often than not. In 75 years, the Santa Rally period has only notched a back-to-back losing year twice.Â
Tuesday — Christmas Eve — marked the first day of the seasonal indicator.
Source: LPL Financial
Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for Carson Investment Research, noted that no other 7-day period is likely to be higher (up 78.4% of the time).Â
Meanwhile, only two 7-day periods have a better average return than the Santa Rally.Â
Over the last century, December marks the most-likely positive month of the year for the S&P 500. Bank of America data shows the month finishes higher roughly three in four times, with the Santa Rally providing most of the gains.Â
During election years, the benchmark index has finished higher in December 83% of the time.Â
“This late-December strength tends to carry over into the next year with the [S&P 500] up 63% of the time on an average return of 0.72% (1.12% median) during the first ten days of January,” BofA analysts wrote in a recent note.Â
With only one day in the books for the Santa Rally so far, the S&P 500 has already secured its third-best annual performance of the last two decades.
History suggests Santa may push the index into the top-performing slot before the calendar turns.Â
Comments or feedback? Reply directly to this email or let me know on X @philrosenn.
Rapid-fire:
Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure (Bloomberg)
Disney’s search for its next CEO is a top priority for Bob Iger in 2025 (Yahoo Finance)
De Beers has amassed its biggest diamond stockpile since the 2008 financial crisis (FT)
China refrained from cutting rates while also draining $158 billion from the financial system, the most since 2014 (Bloomberg)
A top Bank of Japan governor avoided giving a clear signal on whether a rate hike is coming in January (Bloomberg)
For 2025, analysts are most optimistic on the S&P 500’s Communication Services, Energy, and Information Technology sectors (FactSet)
The Fed’s inflation fight increasingly looks like a guessing game (Opening Bell Daily)
The $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles may be gone soon (CNN)
We put your money to work
Betterment’s financial experts and automated investing technology are working behind the scenes to make your money hustle while you do whatever you want.
