Day Traders Diary

1/17/25

The markets finished strong with a run up into the President inauguration as the averages posted their first up week of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 334 points, or 0.78%, to end at 43,487. The S&P 500 rose 59 points or 1% to 5,996 while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 291 points or 1.51% to 19,630.

For the week, the Dow and S&P 500 advanced 3.7% and 2.9%, respectively. Both indexes posted their biggest weekly advance since the week of the U.S. presidential election in November. The Nasdaq climbed 2.5% week to date for its best one-week performance since early December.

Those gains were helped by back-to-back reports showing inflationary pressures softening. The core consumer price index rose less than expected year on year, and the producer price index also had a smaller-than-anticipated increase for December. The 10-year Treasury yield pulled back sharply this week closing at 4.61%. The 2-year Treasury closed at 4.278%.

Big cap tech stocks had a good day, with shares of Tesla popping 3%. Chipmaking giant Nvidia jumped 3.1%, while Alphabet and the rest of the big cap techs were higher.

The banks also led the averages higher this week on strong earnings and strong pipeline for M&A deals in 2025. Shares of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup were each roughly 12% higher on the week, while JPMorgan Chase rose 8% on the week.

On the commodity front, oil was modestly lower today. Gold was lower as well as bitcoin jumped 4% today and 10% on the week as the digital currency is expected to be a beneficiary of the incoming Trump administration.