What can we take away from this relatively linear session, where all bets were off from the 1st half-hour?

Well, it's quite simple: the S&P500 set a new all-time record at 6,101pts.

In the end, with a gain of +0.61% to 6,086Pts, the flagship index achieved only its second best closing in history, after 6,090Pts on December 8.

The Nasdaq gained +1.3% and broke through the symbolic 20.000Pts with a close at 20,009, the best mark since December 26 and a score that puts the index back within 1% of its December 16 record of 20,204.

The Dow Jones index advanced +0.3% to 44,156, but the Russell-2000 surprisingly ended down -0.67% at 2,302, far, far even from the 2,450Pts of November 25: the great "sector rotation" hoped for in 2025 clearly failed to materialize, as the I.A continues to drain the world's capital.

Wall Street is back close to its all-time highs, buoyed by the strong performance of technology stocks in a climate of widespread optimism following the presentation of a gigantic $500 billion investment plan in AI (dubbed "stargate" and which calls for the construction of 20 new giant data-center facilities in the United States over the coming years).

And Nvidia, which equips these data-centers, soared +4.4% to $147, widening its lead over Apple to $3,600 billion.

Note that Microsoft is back strongly in the race for 2nd place, with +4.1% and a market cap of $3,330 billion... as Apple stalled again, with +0.5% (-4% the previous day) and a market cap of $3,370 billion (now down to 1%): Apple could move from 1st to 3rd place in a week).

Also noteworthy are Oracle's solid gains (+7.7%) and Cadence Design's +3.3%... but what can we say about chipmaker ARM, which exploded by +16% to $180, relegating Netflix, which gained "barely" 10% (+9.7% to $954), to a distant second?

There were few market movers on the macro data front, apart from the publication of the Conference Board's index of leading indicators - supposed to reflect future economic activity in the United States -: the "conf'board" fell by 0.1% to 101.6 last month, in line with the economists' consensus.

In November, the index had risen by 0.4%, compared with an initial estimate of 0.3%, its first increase since February 2022.

Despite the downturn in December, the Conference Board says it expects US growth momentum to remain solid into the new year, anticipating GDP growth of 2.3% in 2025.

While investors are betting heavily on the tax cuts (risk of widening deficits) and deregulation measures promised by the new president, a certain vagueness continues to surround the implementation of tariffs (supposed to provide the quid pro quo for tax breaks, but which are potentially inflationary).

Finally, it's a little anecdotal given the absolute record of the 'S&P' and the soaring of ARM, but the yield on 10-year Treasuries deteriorated by +4Pts to 4.614%, with the '30-year' adding +2.5Pts to 4.827%.

This didn't matter, but it could once again become a concern if US indices were to plateau below their peaks by Friday.

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