Stock Market Today: Stocks Soar to Start the Santa Claus Rally

stocks were up to start the santa claus rally — (Image credit: Getty Images)

Markets closed early and volume was thin, but all three main equity benchmarks closed higher on Tuesday to mark the official start of the Santa Claus Rally.

Indeed, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and the broad-based S&P 500 had their best Christmas Eve showings since 2000 and 2011, respectively, as all 11 sectors ended the holiday-shortened trading session in the green.

The closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange sounded at 1 pm Eastern in observance of Christmas Eve, and the bond market shut down at 2 pm. Note that the equity and bond markets have different holidays hours throughout the year.

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There was no incoming data scheduled for release today, and the economic calendar will remain light through the holiday season. The earnings calendar is similarly sparse, though earnings reporting season will be upon us again in less than three weeks.

The Santa Claus Rally

The "Santa Claus Rally" is a real thing, identified in 1972 by Yale Hirsch, the founder of the Stock Trader's Almanac.

As Ryan Detrick of Carson Group explains, "One of the little-known facts about the Santa Claus Rally (SCR) is that it isn’t the entire month of December; it’s actually only seven trading days." It covers the final five trading days of the year and first two trading days of the following year.

Here's the good news: December 24 marks the official start of the Santa Claus Rally. "Historically, it turns out these seven days indeed have been quite jolly," Detrick writes, "as no seven-day combo is more likely to be higher (up 78.4% of the time), and only two combos have a better average return for the S&P 500 than the 1.29% average return during the official Santa Claus Rally period."

Big tech names once again led stocks higher on Tuesday. Tesla (TSLA) led the S&P 500 higher with a gain of 7.4%, while Super Micro Computer (SMCI) was the second-best-performing stock in the index, rising 6%. And Broadcom (AVGO) continued its remarkable rally by adding another 3.2%.

Netflix (NFLX) added 2.3% after KeyBanc analyst Justin Patterson reiterated his Overweight rating on the streaming giant and raised his 12-month price target to $1,000 from $785.

The Nasdaq Composite led the way higher on Christmas Eve, rising 1.4% to 20,031. The S&P 500 added 1.1% to 6,040, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.9% to 43,297.

MicroStrategy wants to buy all the bitcoin

MicroStrategy (MSTR) enjoyed a 7.8% Christmas Eve rally after management said it will ask shareholders to authorize an increase in the amount of Class A common stock in the company from 330 million shares to 10.33 billion shares so it can buy more bitcoin.

MicroStrategy officially joined the Nasdaq-100 ahead of the open on Monday but closed the day down 8.8%.

MicroStrategy said in October that it would raise $21 billion in equity capital and $21 billion in debt capital to fund $42 billion in bitcoin purchases through 2026. In a preliminary proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it's executing that plan "significantly faster than originally anticipated."

Based on MSTR's closing price of $358.18, issuing 10.3 billion new shares would generate more than $3 trillion. The current market value of all the bitcoin trading in the world is just below $2 trillion.

Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani said in a recent note that he expects "more visibility and recognition beyond fresh ETF inflows" for MSTR based on its inclusion in the Nasdaq-100, adding that "the market will likely set its sight on S&P 500 inclusion for 2025."

Chhugani added that due to changes in accounting rules effective next year, MicroStrategy's unrealized bitcoin gains will help its prospects for inclusion in the S&P 500.

"With the Trump 2.0 administration dialing up its crypto focus with the nomination of a crypto friendly SEC chair and appointments of a Crypto/AI Czar," Chhugani concludes, "we believe the MSTR flywheel is going to further accelerate from here."

Chhugani has an Outperform rating and a $600 12-month price target for MSTR, implying 67.5% upside from the stock's closing price on Christmas Eve.

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David Dittman is the former managing editor and chief investment strategist of Utility Forecaster, which was named one of "10 investment newsletters to read besides Buffett's" in 2015. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, and the Villanova University School of Law, and a former stockbroker, David has been working in financial media for more than 20 years.