Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq futures slip with Wall Street set to put a bow on roller-coaster 2025

US banal futures dipped aboriginal Wednesday arsenic Wall Street prepared to wrapper up an eventful, roller-coaster trading twelvemonth with sizable gains.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F), the S&P 500 (ES=F), and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (NQ=F) each slipped astir 0.2%.

After 3 consecutive losing sessions that person dimmed hopes for a "Santa Claus rally," Wall Street is nevertheless acceptable to observe its gains successful 2025. The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) remains up implicit 17% this year, connected way for its sixth twelvemonth of 15%-plus gains implicit the past seven. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) has paced gains with an implicit 20% rise, portion the Dow (^DJI) is up implicit 13%.

But the twelvemonth was not without its challenges. The Nasdaq concisely entered a carnivore marketplace a small implicit 8 months ago, and the S&P stood connected the brink of 1 aft President Trump imposed his astir sweeping tariffs successful April earlier mostly backtracking.

Wall Street didn't look backmost from there, contempt blips amid concerns implicit those tariffs, arsenic good arsenic geopolitical developments, the wellness of the US economy, and — possibly astir of each — soaring AI-fueled valuations.

The outlook for 2026 calls for much optimism. Every Wall Street forecaster tracked by Bloomberg is predicting that stocks volition rally for a 4th consecutive year. But plentifulness of risks remain: The AI roar could falter, the system could surprise, and the US president remains a chaotic card.

The Federal Reserve's involvement complaint way is besides successful absorption into adjacent year, with the divisions that person gripped the cardinal slope successful 2025 apt to proceed — and with a caller seat acceptable to regenerate Jerome Powell by mid-year. Minutes from the cardinal bank's December meeting, released Tuesday, showed this month's determination was a adjacent telephone — and that galore officials felt it could beryllium "some time" earlier different complaint cut. Overall, 85% of bets for January's gathering are connected the Fed holding dependable astatine existent levels.