Stock market today: Nasdaq, S&P 500, Dow rise as tech fuels holiday spirits, gold climbs to record high

Tesla (TSLA) stock jumped 2% on Monday, nearing $500 per share.

The stock rose after the Delaware Supreme Court reinstated CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package, overturning a lower court decision that had previously struck it down.

Shares have risen about 22% year-to-date.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré reports:

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AI hyperscaler Alphabet (GOOG) is set to acquire data center infrastructure firm Intersect in a deal valued at $4.75 billion, plus debt, the company said Monday.

Shares in Alphabet ticked up by a bit over 0.6% through morning trading on Monday.

The deal will see Alphabet absorb all of Intersect’s data center and energy infrastructure projects, equal to multiple gigawatts’ worth of power. The move comes as Alphabet goes head-to-head with fellow Big Tech firms in an AI arms race that has seen the sector significantly balloon its spending on both energy and compute power.

The deal will “augment Alphabet and Google’s ongoing commitment to partnering with utilities and energy developers across the sector to unlock abundant, reliable, affordable energy supply that enables the buildout of data center infrastructure without passing on costs to grid customers,” the company said in a press release.

Rising electricity costs for ratepayers have become a flashpoint issue throughout the country as construction of data centers — which require immense loads of energy to operate — has boomed, in many ways overwhelming the US power grid with raw demand.

Intersect’s already operational assets in Texas and mid-development assets in California are not part of the deal and will remain operated independently, funded by backers that include the private equity giant TPG.

“Intersect will help us expand capacity, operate more nimbly in building new power generation in lockstep with new data center load, and reimagine energy solutions to drive US innovation and leadership. We look forward to welcoming Sheldon and the Intersect team,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in the press release announcing the deal.

Retailers are solidly outpacing restaurants through the back half of 2025, according to research from Bank of America. The retail sector has gained 12.2% since July, while the restaurant sector has shed 6.5%, according to S&P indexes tracking sector performance.

Comparable sales in retail have outpaced those in restaurants by roughly 1 percentage point per quarter since 2024, but that gap is expected to have widened to 4 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to BofA.

At the same time, the bank wrote, the rate of positive estimate revisions has been twice as high in retail compared to restaurants.

As the restaurant sector has attempted to keep up, BofA noted, average check size grew 5 percentage points faster than in retail between the third quarters of 2022 and 2024. But that gap has closed to 1.4 percentage points, “suggesting that even in real terms retail’s same-store sales growth trends are better than restaurants'” where “transaction growth has slowed even as menu pricing has rolled off.”

The sectors also diverge on whether size helps or hinders an operation.

In restaurants, publicly traded conglomerates are largely lagging the wider restaurant industry, as same-store sales growth has slowed at a faster pace in publicly traded companies in the sector than at independent companies.

In retail, the opposite is true, as publicly traded retailers are “taking share from their smaller competitors.”

The State Street consumer discretionary index ETF (XLY), heavily weighted toward major retailers, has picked up 16% in the past six months, narrowly outstripping the S&P 500 (^GSPC).

Circle Internet (CRCL) CEO Jeremy Allaire said his company is building digital currency technology that could be “running a substantial portion of this new economy” as Circle widens out its technological ambitions.

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi reports:

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JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is considering potential ways to offer cryptocurrency trading to the bank’s institutional clients, Bloomberg reported Monday morning, marking the latest move by the US’s largest bank to deepen its involvement in digital currencies.

Shares in JPMorgan rose by roughly 1% on the news, while bitcoin (BTC-USD) picked up roughly 2.2%.

Earlier this year, JPMorgan rolled out its “JPM Coin,” a digital token that allows users to send and receive money on a public blockchain operated by Coinbase Global (COIN). However, the bank has yet to offer cryptocurrency trading to its clients.

Potential solutions could include both spot and derivatives trading, according to Bloomberg.

JPMorgan follows fellow bulge-bracket banks in moving to offer the service to clients. Goldman Sachs (GS) has operated a crypto derivatives trading desk for several years, and Morgan Stanley (MS) is partnering with the crypto firm Zerohash to offer crypto-trading services to clients on its E-Trade platform beginning in 2026.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has spent 2025 in a turbulent up-and-down pattern. After crashing to levels below $80,000 in the days after the Trump administration’s April tariff announcements, the coin rallied to an all-time high above $125,000 but has since fallen back below $90,000.

Other major cryptocurrencies have performed similarly.

Stocks rose to kick off the holiday-shortened week as investors looked to move past a shaky start to December in hopes that a seasonal Santa Claus rally might materialize.

The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose 0.6% while the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) climbed 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) opened 0.4% higher as the major indexes looked to extend their win streak to a third day.

Gold (GC=F) and silver (SI=F) gained 1.7% and 2.2%, respectively, adding to monthly gains.

Crude oil prices also increased after the US intercepted a third Venezuelan oil tanker. West Texas Intermediate (CL=F), the US benchmark, gained 2.25% to trade around $57 a barrel, and Brent (BZ=F), the global benchmark, rose 2.2% to around $61 per barrel.

Workplace services giant Cintas Corporation (CTAS) has launched a second takeover bid for rival UniFirst (UNF) with an acquisition offering at $275 per share.

Shares in Unifirst soared by more than 27% in premarket trading following news of the $3.96 billion offer. Cintas slipped by roughly 1.3%.

Cintas’ offer, at $275 per share, comes roughly 11 months after the company ended talks with UniFirst on an acquisition offer at an identical per-share price. Cintas said at the time that it was unable to engage in “substantive” conversations with UniFirst’s board.

Cintas’ January offer had been valued at roughly $5.2 billion, but shares in UniFirst have plunged by more than 20% through the year after Cintas pulled its original acquisition offer.

Larry Ellison, the centibillionaire founder and chairman of Oracle (ORCL), has agreed to personally backstop $40.4 billion in equity financing for Paramount Skydance’s (PSKY) proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).

Paramount shares spiked by more than 3% in premarket trading, while WBD rose around 3.8%.

In a securities filing Monday morning, Paramount Skydance — led by Larry Ellison’s son, David Ellison — said the elder Ellison had agreed to backstop the financing to assuage fears from WBD that Paramount is too undercapitalized to be able to get an acquisition across the finish line.

Paramount has proposed a $30 per share, all-cash acquisition of both Warner Brothers’ studios and streaming division and its linear network division, in a deal valued at $108.4 billion.

Paramount’s Monday announcement said the Ellison family trust owns approximately 1.16 billion shares of Oracle common stock, and that Larry Ellison had agreed not to revoke the trust or transfer assets while negotiations remain open.

WBD has in recent weeks become the target of a multi-round bidding war between Paramount and Netflix (NFLX) for the storied film studio and collection of broadcast networks.

Prior to Paramount’s announcement on Monday, WBD had rejected the company’s acquisition offer, appearing to tip the scales in favor of Netflix’s proposal that would see the streaming giant absorb WBD’s streaming and studios division.

WBD’s broadcast and linear TV division would continue with plans to be spun off into a separate public company, under the terms of the Netflix offer.

Rocket Lab (RKLB) stock extended a nearly 18% gain on Friday, rising another 4% in premarket trading, after securing a $816 million contract to build satellites for the US Space Force and successfully launching its Electron rocket for the 21st time this year.

The latest contract with the US Space Development Agency (SDA), announced last Friday, marked Rocket Lab’s largest single contract to date and brings its total contract value with the SDA to $1.3 billion.

And the launch of its Electron rocket on Sunday for a Japan-based Earth imaging company called iQPS set a record for the number of successful launches in a year for the company.

The twin developments boosted the stock to all-time highs. Over the past five days, Rocket Lab’s stock is up about 15%, putting its year-to-date gains at 176%.

Bloomberg reports:

Oil rose as President Donald Trump intensified a blockade on Venezuela, with US forces boarding one tanker and pursuing another within weeks of first capturing a vessel.

Brent crude (BZ=F) climbed to around $61 a barrel, after two weekly declines. The US Coast Guard boarded the Centuries tanker in the Caribbean on Saturday, which was laden with about 2 million barrels of Venezuelan crude. It was also in pursuit of the Bella 1, which was en route to the Latin American nation.

Washington has been stepping up pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s government, with Trump aiming to choke off its key revenue stream. The US has designated the regime as a foreign terrorist organization, accusing it of involvement in drug trafficking. Venezuela still has the world’s largest crude reserves, but its exports, most of which go to China, now account for less than 1% of global demand.

There were also heightened risks to supplies from another member of the OPEC+ producer group, after Ukraine hit an oil tanker from Russia’s shadow fleet in the Mediterranean Sea with drones for the first time. That followed strikes on Lukoil PJSC facilities in the Caspian Sea.

The geopolitical situation has helped put a floor under oil prices, which have dropped by about a fifth this year. The declines have been driven by an oversupply as both OPEC+ and the group’s competitors raised production will demand growth slowed.

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DJT (DJT) stock rose more than 5% before the bell on Monday. The stock soared over 50% last week after announcing a merger with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies.

Tesla (TSLA) stock rose 1% during premarket trading on Monday. This follows the Delaware Supreme Court decision on Friday, which overruled the Delaware Chancery Court’s 2024 ruling that had struck down CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package.

Micron Technology (MU) stock rose over 2% on Monday before the bell. The chipmakers stock soared 10% last week, following its positive earnings report.

Honeywell (HON) stock fell almost 1% during premarket trading on Monday. Honeywell it expects a one-time charge of about $470 ‌million in the fourth quarter related to ‌a potential settlement of Flexjet-linked litigation.

Bloomberg reports:

The US stock market is poised to be kept on edge next year as investors are caught between fear of missing out on the artificial-intelligence rally and concern that it’s a bubble just waiting to burst.

Big selloffs and quick reversals have been a feature of stock markets for the past 18 months. That trend is likely to continue heading into 2026, with some strategists anticipating that AI will follow the boom-and-bust cycle of past technological revolutions.

The tech companies at the center of the AI investment boom carry an outsized influence. While the divergence between the group and the rest of the S&P 500 (^GSPC) has helped dampen realized volatility across the market in 2025 as gains in tech cancel out declines elsewhere, investors are alert for stumbles in chip names to spread. That would cause volatility gauges such as the Cboe Volatility Index to surge.

“2025 has generally been a year of rotation and narrow leadership, rather than one of broad risk-on versus risk-off,” said Kieran Diamond, derivatives strategist at UBS Group AG. “This has helped to drag implied correlation levels down to record lows, which in turn leaves the VIX at risk of ongoing outsized spikes whenever we see macro drivers taking over again.”

The scale of the stock-price runup has made angst about a bubble the top concern among fund managers, a recent Bank of America Corp. (BAC) survey found. But another is the classic risk of missing out if it still has more room to run — potentially punishing anyone who pulls back too early.

The strategists expect equity volatility to be supported in 2026 primarily because asset bubbles tend to get more unstable as they inflate. As a result, they say investors should expect occasional declines surpassing 10%, but with record-fast snapbacks as traders realize the bubble isn’t popping yet.

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Bloomberg reports:

Gold (GC=F) and silver (SI=F)soared to all-time highs, as escalating geopolitical tensions and bets on further US rate cuts added momentum to the best annual performance in more than four decades.

Bullion climbed more than 1.5% to surpass the previous record of $4,381 an ounce set in October, while silver rallied as much as 3.4%, closing in on $70 an ounce, extending gains that have put both metals firmly on course for their strongest annual performance since 1979.

The latest push higher comes as traders bet that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates twice in 2026, as US President Donald Trump also advocates for looser monetary policy. Lower rates are typically a tailwind for precious metals, which don’t pay interest.

Rising geopolitical tensions are also enhancing the haven appeal of gold and silver. The US has intensified an oil blockade against Venezuela, stepping up pressure on the government of President Nicolás Maduro, while Ukraine attacked an oil tanker from Russia’s shadow fleet in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time.

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Clearwater Analytics Holdings (CWAN) stock rose 7% before the bell on Monday after a group of private equity firms led by Permira and Warburg Pincus clinched a deal to acquire the investment and accounting software maker ​for about $8.4 billion, including debt, the parties said in a joint statement on Sunday.

Reuters reports:

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