Good morning and Happy New Year’s Eve! Or, Welcome to 2026 to our friends in Australia, New Zealand and all the other regions that have already flipped the calendar. Like the Times Square ball drop, equities have been slowly falling this week. That trend looked to be continuing earlier this morning as futures once again ticked lower, but they are now in the green at the day’s high following solid jobless claims. We’re gonna need a bit more holiday cheer for a Santa Claus rally to make an appearance, but we still have a few days. It’s not like there’s been massive selling pressure though. The calmness of the markets during the final few days of the year is noteworthy. As Neil Sethi posted, over the past three days only two stocks in the S&P 500 have been up more than 3% in a day, with none yesterday, the first time in at least six months. Only six stocks have been down more than 3%.

Commodity volatility continued to be the main storyline as silver jumped 10% after selling off on Monday. However, the CME raised margin requirements again overnight and that’s reversing most of yesterday’s gain. Crude is up modestly this morning. Ag is mostly lower. China has reportedly bought around 8M tons of US soybeans this year, in accordance with US-China trade deal. Crypto is trading modestly higher with both Bitcoin and Ethereum playing around with their 20d ma.

Weekly claims are the main macro data today and they came in well below estimates and declined from last week, falling just below 200k. While the Christmas holiday likely had an impact (Thanksgiving week was 192K), the 199k print is also near the 50yr low. Continuing Claims also showed a solid decline. Yields rose about 2bp on the data and the US Dollar Index jumped as well.