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NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are closing lower as Wall Street ends a holiday-shortened week on a down note. The S&P 500 fell 1.1% Friday and the the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 333 points, or 0.8%. The Nasdaq composite dropped 1.5%. The “Magnificent 7” stocks weighed on the market, led by declines in Nvidia, Tesla and Microsoft. Even with the loss, the S&P 500 had a modest gain for the week and is still headed for its second consecutive annual gain of more than 20%, the first time that has happened since 1997-1998. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.62%. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. NEW YORK (AP) — Technology stocks are dragging down the market Friday as Wall Street closes out a holiday-shortened week. The S&P 500 fell 1.3%, with more than 90% of stocks in the benchmark index losing ground. The benchmark index was managing to hold onto a modest gain for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 418 points, or 1%, to 42,878 as of 1:43 p.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite fell 1.8%. Technology stocks were the biggest weight on the market Friday. Semiconductor giant Nvidia slumped 2.7%. Its enormous valuation gives it an outsize influence on indexes. Other Big Tech stocks losing ground included Microsoft, with a 2% decline. A wide range of retailers also fell. Amazon fell 1.9% and Best Buy slipped 1.8%. The sector is being closely watched for clues on how it performed during the holiday shopping season. Energy stocks held up better than the rest of the market, with a loss of just 0.1% as crude oil prices rose 1.4%. The S&P 500 gained nearly 3% over a 3-day stretch before breaking for the Christmas holiday. On Thursday, the index posted a small decline. “There's just some uncertainty over this relief rally we've witnessed since last week,” said Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial. Despite Friday's drop, the market is moving closer to another standout annual finish . The S&P 500 is on track for a gain of around 25% in 2024. That would mark a second consecutive yearly gain of more than 20%, the first time that has happened since 1997-1998. The gains have been driven partly by upbeat economic data showing that consumers continued spending and the labor market remained strong. Inflation, while still high, has also been steadily easing. A report on Friday showed that sales and inventory estimates for the wholesales trade industry fell 0.2% in November, following a slight gain in October. That weaker-than-expected report follows an update on the labor market Thursday that showed unemployment benefits held steady last week. The stream of upbeat economic data and easing inflation helped prompt a reversal in the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy this year. Expectations for interest rate cuts also helped drive market gains. The central bank recently delivered its third cut to interest rates in 2024. Even though Inflation has come closer to the central bank's target of 2%, it remains stubbornly above that mark and worries about it heating up again have tempered the forecast for more interest rate cuts. Inflation concerns have added to uncertainties heading into 2025, which include the labor market’s path ahead and shifting economic policies under incoming President Donald Trump. Worries have risen that Trump’s preference for tariffs and other policies could lead to higher inflation , a bigger U.S. government debt and difficulties for global trade. Amedisys rose 4.7% after the home health care and hospice services provider agreed to extend the deadline for its sale to UnitedHealth Group. The Justice Department had sued to block the $3.3 billion deal, citing concerns he combination would hinder access to home health and hospice services in the U.S. The move to extend the deadline comes ahead of an expected shift in regulatory policy under Trump. The incoming administration is expected to have a more permissive approach to dealmaking and is less likely to raise antitrust concerns. In Asia, Japan’s benchmark index surged as the yen remained weak against the dollar. Stocks in South Korea fell after the main opposition party voted to impeach the country’s acting leader. Markets in Europe gained ground. Bond yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.61% from 4.59% late Thursday. The yield on the two-year Treasury slipped to 4.31% from 4.33% late Thursday. Wall Street will have more economic updates to look forward to next week, including reports on pending home sales and home prices. There will also be reports on U.S. construction spending and snapshots of manufacturing activity. Damian J. Troise, The Associated Press
Much has been written in recent decades about the growing influence of money on politics and elections in the United States, including titles such as ‘The Best Congress Money Can Buy and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy’. But has Donald Trump’s victory over Vice-President Kamala Harris, whose campaign had a huge funding advantage, undermined that narrative? In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville warned of the threat that big money poses to the US system of governance in his book Democracy in America. Wary of the influence of oligarchs and plutocrats, Tocqueville wrote: “The surface of American society is [...] covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colours sometimes peep.” Today, it is the billionaire class leveraging its financial resources to influence elections and policymaking, consolidating more power at the expense of the vast majority of ordinary citizens, further widening America’s wealth inequality, and weakening Americans’ trust in national institutions. The floodgates were opened by Citizens United v Federal Election Commission (2010), in which the Supreme Court reversed campaign-finance restrictions, enabling corporations and other outside groups to “spend unlimited amounts” on elections. The money being channelled into campaigns has since soared, with super PACs (political action committees) raising nearly $4.3bn this year, up from $89mn in 2010. But the vast amount of money that poured into the 2024 race did not have a decisive effect on the outcome. Trump was re-elected despite being outspent by Harris, and GOP interest groups and donors gained a remarkable return on their investment. In addition to winning the presidency, Republicans also retained their majority in the House of Representatives and won back the Senate, giving the party full control of the legislative and executive branches. Many factors contributed to Trump’s resounding victory, with the GOP nominee sweeping all seven highly-contested battleground states. For starters, as he shuttled between courtrooms and campaign stops, his base of conservative support was seemingly unshakable. Trump set new records for the Republican Party, making inroads into unions, which have historically leaned Democratic and kept him competitive in key swing states, and attracting more Black and Latino voters than any other GOP presidential nominee in recent history. Despite her fundraising prowess, Harris faced strong political headwinds, not least the unpopularity of President Joe Biden. Many voters saw the election as a referendum on “Bidenomics”, which they associated with high inflation, the attendant cost-of-living crisis, and erosion of household purchasing power. Even though the US Federal Reserve brought down inflation without triggering a recession – annual real GDP grew by 2.8% in the third quarter of 2024, above the long-run growth rate, and the unemployment rate remained historically low – the Democrats paid the political price for what Trump called a “Kamala Harris inflation tax”. Voters were nostalgic for the economy under the first Trump administration. Real average hourly earnings rose by 6.4% during Trump’s presidency, compared to only 1.4% during Biden’s. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta show that the share of household income needed for housing costs fell under Trump and increased by nearly 50% under Biden. Of course, many forgot that Trump inherited from Barack Obama a strong economy with the longest employment expansion on record. Trump also entered the race leading on several issues that American voters say they care about most – inflation, immigration, and crime. After months of campaigning, Trump was still ahead on all three in the weeks before the election. According to a YouGov poll conducted at the end of October, 49% of Americans thought that Trump would do a better job on immigration, whereas 35% thought Harris would. In a Gallup poll conducted in September, the former president had a nine-point lead over the vice president on the question of who would be a better steward of the economy. Voters also had more confidence in Trump’s ability to handle the Russia-Ukraine war and the Gaza war, with 70% believing that he has experience in foreign affairs. But that is not to discount the power of ultra-rich donors. Trump returns to the White House at a time when the US is deeply divided and highly unequal – more so than at any time since the post-Civil War era. The increasing influence of wealthy individuals and groups over the electoral process and policymaking has undoubtedly contributed to this widening gap between rich and poor. The wealth of the top 1% of US households grew from 36 times to 71 times that of those at the 50th percentile over the past 60 years, and now exceeds the wealth of the middle 60% of households. Economic and political inequalities are closely related. The surging power of the extremely wealthy minority has left most Americans poor and voiceless, fuelling class-based discontent. Bridging this divide may require breaking the chains that have kept policymakers beholden to the donor class for decades and undertaking a democratic shift toward broad-based accountability and more inclusive policies that strengthen individual agency, expand economic opportunities, and improve the income distribution. More than increasing the rate of upward mobility, these policies will rekindle the American dream and foster social cohesion. The future of our democracy and shared prosperity depends on steps that upcoming administrations must take to rebuild trust in our institutions and create a fairer distribution of political and economic power. As former US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis put it: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” — Project Syndicate •Hippolyte Fofack, a former chief economist and director of research at the African Export-Import Bank, is a fellow with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network at Columbia University, a research associate at Harvard University’s Center for African Studies, and a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. Related Story Qatar establishes WEF's Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution 61 countries to compete in 8th Katara Award for Reciting Holy Qur’an
Stingy Devils open home-and-home with HurricanesThe New Jersey Devils hope the momentum they built leading up to the NHL's holiday break will carry over after the three days off, as the Metropolitan Division leaders start a two-day, home-and-home series with the third-place Carolina Hurricanes on Friday in Newark, N.J. Coach Sheldon Keefe's team has won five of its last six games, including the previous two by shutouts. Jacob Markstrom stopped a dozen shots in the Devils' 5-0 win over the visiting New York Rangers on Monday. That came just two days after he made 12 saves in a 3-0 home victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Stacker compiled a list of cities with the fastest growing home prices in the Savannah, GA metro using data from Zillow. Click for more. Cities with the fastest-growing home prices in the Savannah metro areaKinder Morgan Announces 2025 Financial Expectations