Wall Street’s Holiday Mood: S&P 500 Tags Another Record as Trading Thins Out

CNBC and Reuters contributed to this report.

The S&P 500 nudged its way to a new all-time intraday high on Wednesday, building on the momentum from Tuesday’s record close as traders tiptoed through a holiday-shortened session.

By late morning, the broad index was up about 0.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite hovered around flat. The Dow Jones Industrial Average did a bit more of the heavy lifting, climbing about 208 points, or 0.4%.

A couple of familiar names helped set the tone. Nike popped roughly 4% after Apple CEO Tim Cook disclosed he’d bought shares of the sportswear giant. Micron Technology also stood out, rising around 3% as investors kept hunting for winners tied to the AI and chip cycle.

The upbeat mood followed a strong session Tuesday led by big tech, with Alphabet, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Amazon among the names pushing indexes higher. The S&P 500 finished that day at a fresh record close of 6,909.79 — a milestone that set the stage for Wednesday’s early push higher.

Under the hood, traders were still digesting a delayed economic update: the Commerce Department’s third-quarter GDP reading came in at 4.3%, beating expectations of 3.2%. The hotter number briefly cooled the market’s eagerness for near-term rate cuts, but futures pricing still suggests investors see two cuts by the end of 2026, based on the CME FedWatch picture.

Now the market’s drifting into the classic end-of-year question: do we get the Santa Claus rally — that seasonal bump that typically lands between the last five trading days of the year and the first two of the next (this year, from Dec. 24 through Jan. 5)?

Some on Wall Street think things will stay calm simply because fewer people are at their desks. Thomas Martin of Globalt Investments expects a quieter stretch thanks to thin holiday volume, but says the market still has a slight upward lean — enough, maybe, to flirt with 7,000 on the S&P 500 before the calendar flips. He’s not calling for fireworks, just the kind of slow grind higher that can happen when there’s no big bad news and not much selling pressure either.

And the clock is literally ticking: the New York Stock Exchange closes early Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET for Christmas Eve, and markets will be shut Thursday for Christmas Day.